American Horror Story - Season 2AU E2 - The System
by leaftheweed
Summary: Episode 2: Tate survived the clock tower shooting but how will he cope with life inside one of the nation's most corrupt asylums? With insane inmates and even crazier staff, the place is bad enough. But throw in some ghost stories and experimental testing and things really start to get ugly. Written in the style of the show with a mixed cast from the first 2 seasons.
1. Chapter 1 - What's in a Name?

.

Doctor Edward Heath was the senior surgeon at Briarcliff Mansion Asylum. He had been there for over 30 years and was next only to Sister Jude in authority at the hospital. He loved classical music and the arts, particularly the Renaissance painters. He liked to think of himself as a Renaissance man as well: He was a doctor and a surgeon, one who specialized in matters of the brain. In his rare moments of off-time he sculpted and occasionally sketched drawings. He loved the symphony and could go on for hours about wine vintages.

But what he was truly passionate about was the way the brain controlled the body. Every aspect of the fact fascinated and enthralled him. He was devoted to learning and mapping all the ways that precious lump of gray glistening flesh could command a human. He was blessed with a position at Briarcliff where he was able to maintain a steady source of research material in the form of 'volunteers' from the patient pool who were offered money for experimental therapy and treatments.

The research wing was underground, reachable only through the passageways that connected the above-ground buildings. Dr. Heath had a private office in the research wing. The hall was also equipped with six cells similar to the ones in the other wards - with a few unique additions to their floor plans. Each had its own toilet and sink, for instance, and all were fitted with O rings in the walls, ceilings and floors. The rings were often put to use for purposes of traction and restraint.

Dr. Heath had three volunteers in the wing at the time, though one had just recently suffered extremely adverse affects from an experimental course of drugs. The patient had required both legs and arms to be removed when the medicine turned flesh-eating. His name was Leonard and he was the first volunteer the doctor checked on.

The man was in critical but stable condition. He was sedated and hooked up to both an IV drip and a catheter. The doctor checked Leonard's chart and machines, then the man's physical condition beneath the loose bandaging.

After three days he felt he could conclusively say that the amputation had halted the progression of the decay. The left arm was exposed clear down to the bone but the flesh and gristle were clear of necrosis and even beginning to show signs of healing. The right arm, less damaged, was likewise starting to heal. The legs were in slightly better shape, being the furthest from the injection site.

"Looking muuuch better, Leonard," Dr. Heath praised. "That new course of antibiotics is helping. If you keep improving like this I think we'll have you on prosthetics in just a few weeks. Won't that be nice?"

The man just lay there, swaddled in bandages, life support machines beeping.

It was all Heath expected him to do at the moment. The doctor made sure he was well-covered and comfortable-looking then went on to the next patient's room.

"Good morning, Sharon," he said warmly, though he knew she couldn't hear him.

The young woman was bound up in a body cast. He had personally stuffed her ears with wax and taped her mouth shut before wrapping her up in gauze and plaster. An oxygen hose led to her nose and there were other tubes poking into the body cast that regulated her drug intake, liquid diet and waste output. There were eye holes in the head but they were wrapped over in another layer of gauze. She'd been suspended in that state of sensory deprivation for nearly a month.

Sharon had been admitted to Briarcliff as a teen when she wouldn't stop eating inedible things - beads, paper clips, staples - and had spent almost ten years in the system. She had nothing to lose in trying Dr. Heath's experimental deprivation treatment. At the end of the month the surgeon intended to open the cast and record the results.

It was a moment he was anxiously awaiting. He longed to see what she would look like. When he'd bound her up she'd been a fairly attractive young woman. After a month in bandages she would have experienced weight loss and muscle atrophy. Bed sores. He would record whatever he saw but he was more interested in her mental condition. Would she be cured of her eating fetish? Would she be starved for human contact?

Dr. Heath checked her charts and monitors and bags. All looked as it should.

"Just a few more days," he said to her as though she'd asked about her prognosis. "Then the bandages can come off."

He hung her chart back up then moved along to his last patient: Pete. A man with such an uneven brain even his skull suffered for it. One of his eyes was set dramatically higher than the other and they both pointed downward at the outer corners. He rarely closed his mouth on account of it being hard to breathe through his crooked nose. The man was diagnosed as being "22% retarded" when he was transferred from some other state facility after a fight with his mother.

Pete didn't do any fighting now. He just lay strapped to the adjustable operating table with a removable piece of skull that Heath could lift to perform research. Like the other patients, Pete was intubated and unaware of the doctor who was checking his vitals and charts. Unlike the others, the big man had wires running from his brain to machinery that crowded the back part of the room.

"No time for exercises today, Pete," Dr. Heath said as he checked the man's charts and specific machines. "Testing pool."

All three volunteers were incredibly useful but Dr. Heath needed a new group of test subjects for the next experiment he was going to do. It was a federal test, one being performed in cooperation with other hospitals around the state and in three other states. Heath stood to make quite a lot of money with the results, regardless of what they were.

Getting the Reverend Monsignor Timothy to agree to allow it had been a battle but in the end the promise of money for the facility and church won him over. But the operation was to be kept secret: Only a handful of people knew what was going to happen, for the sake of a completely neutral study.

"I'll be back to check on you later, Pete," said the doctor as he put back the man's chart.

Heath stepped out into the hall lit by the amber glow of the underground lights. He had three vacant rooms. After the federal testing was done he hoped to have at least one of those rooms occupied.

**...**

**░A░m░e░r░i░c░a░n░ ░H░o░r░r░o░r░ ░S░t░o░r░y░**

**...**

"Who's she?" Tate asked John.

They were looking at the woman who had just been deposited in the common room. She looked like someone out an ad for hair dye to Tate, with her blonde flip 'do and her long polished nails.

"Some new gal," the guy answered. "I heard the orderlies say she thinks she can talk to ghosts or something."

"We should hook her up with that guy who thinks the aliens abducted him," Tate grinned.

"Could be dangerous," said John as he looked back to his ever-present notepad. "Do you want to be haunted by the ghost of an alien?"

"Maybe they could let us out."

"You should write science fiction," John grinned.

"I'm gonna go say hi to her," said Tate, looking at the new lady again. She was still standing near the double doors.

"Be careful."

"What's she going to do?" grinned the teen. "Bite?"

He got up then and went over to her, having to duck past a fat bald lady who was trying to dance while the cursing man plunked a few keys on the upright piano.

The new woman eyed Tate up and down as he approached.

"Hey," the boy said, putting on a friendly smile.

"Leave me alone," she said bluntly. "I know what you are. The disquiet spirits of the people you murdered are all around you."

Tate blinked at her then frowned. "I was just saying hi."

"I don't want to talk to you."

"Suit yourself," he said, disgruntled.

He went back over to where John was sitting and sank down into the couch. He folded his arms.

"How'd it go?" said John, lifting a brow curiously.

"She said I had ghosts on me and she didn't want them blocking up her vibe," Tate paraphrased.

"Bummer."

"Yeah. Oh well. Whatever. I'm gonna go hit the head," Tate said. "When I get back do you think I could bum a cigarette off you?"

"Yeah, sure."

"You're the best, John. I don't know what I'm gonna do if they let you out of here before I can get out."

"You could try getting a job and buying some cigarettes of your own," suggested John. "It is possible."

"I don't think Sister Stone-face would let me."

"You never know," said John. "Stranger things have happened."

Tate got up then and sauntered for the door, pausing to tell the guard that he needed to go to the bathroom. The man let him out. There wasn't another person in the hall. It was strange how guarded the place was and yet how lax. If only there was an exit nearby. But the only thing near wsa the nurse's station.

The station was at the intersection of wings and had shatterproof glass surrounding it. There was a shade pulled down over it that wasn't usually down. And despite the shade it wasn't hard to tell that there was an orderly in there banging a girl. Tate paused and listened, hoping to hear something that might let him know whether it was a patient or a nurse but the couple wasn't making much noise beyond the bump-bump-bump against the cabinets.

Disappointed, Tate headed on to the bathroom. While he was at the urinal the electricity flickered and dimmed. It was a weird experience, finishing his business by half-light. The lights came back on just after he finished so he rinsed his hands then headed back out to the hall. The lights went dim again for a few moments while he was walking back toward the commons then they started to flicker.

The people screwing at the nurse's station didn't seem to notice the issues with the lights. The flickering was making Tate's head hurt and made him see things. He thought he saw someone out of the corner of his eye standing in a doorway he thought was closed. When he looked in that direction there was nothing but a closed door.

He hurried back into the common room. Once there he oriented on John and went over to flop down in one of the old chairs near the young man.

"Welcome back," said John.

Tate grunted, too busy thinking to make small talk. He'd been so spooked out there in the hall, he hadn't given serious thought to trying to escape. All the drugs he'd been taking at Briarcliff were probably to blame for his inability to think much further than the moment. They probably did that to patients on purpose, to make it harder for them to get away.

There was a semi-festive atmosphere in the commons, Tate noticed. Several of the residents were trying to dance. The lady with the baby doll was surprisingly fairly coordinated. The new lady didn't seem to be enjoying the party though. She looked creeped out, which gave Tate a small dose of vindictive pleasure.

His line of sight was suddenly interrupted by a bag of potato chips thrust right in front of his face. Refocusing on the bag, he found it was held by the candy-striper he'd seen before in the cafeteria hall. She and a couple of nuns were passing out the bagged treats to the assembled inmates.

"What's this for?" Tate asked as he took the bag from her.

"To eat," she said. She gave a bag of chips to John.

"What's your name?" asked Tate.

"I'm not supposed to talk to the patients," the girl responded reluctantly.

When she went to move onto the next group of patients Tate got up and followed her.

"I just want to know your name," he said reasonably. "If you don't tell me, I'll have to make one up for you."

She handed a bag of chips to a man with a deformed face. "Guess you'll have to make one up."

"Suit yourself, Mildred,"

"Mildred!" she exclaimed, offended.

"Leave her alone," the security guard warned Tate, attention drawn to them by the girl's outburst.

The teen put his hands up to show everyone he was behaving. "You said to make up a name," he said quietly to the candy-striper.

"My name's Violet," she whispered back.

"Leave her alone!" the security guard repeated as he strode over, nightstick in hand.

He took a swipe and whacked Tate in the back of the knee. The blond teen yelped and hopped away from Violet and the guard.

"I'm not doing anything!" he protested, hands up. The potato chip bag hit the floor.

Despite the protests, the guard whacked Tate in the other knee. The young man yelped again and fell to the floor. A couple of other patients scrambled away from the escalating situation.

"Motherfucker!" Tate swore, grabbing at the most recent injury.

One of the orderlies across the room noticed the commotion and came over to get involved even though he didn't know what was going on. He assumed Tate had done something out of line and, being in a surly mood that morning, the staff member found him an easy target. He grabbed Tate in a headlock.

"I'm not-" the teen started but was cut off when the orderly - Carl he thought the guy's name was -cut off his air supply. When he struggled, the man punched him once in the side of the head really hard and that put an end to the short fight.

When Tate woke next, he was in his cell, cuffed to the bed. His head hurt a lot.

But he remembered the girl's name. Violet.

...

* * *

><p>Author's Note:<p>

Welcome to Episode 2. In Ep. 1 we arrived at Briarcliff, now we're going to get to know the system with this one.

Dr. Heath is an amalgam of various vile doctors across time and the globe. He's largely inspired by Shiro Ishii, a doctor who ran a hospital during the WWII era. He makes Mme. Lalaurie look like an uninspired amateur where torture's concerned. Ishii was pardoned of war crimes in exchange for turning the data he collected in his torture sessions over to the US government. True story.

Next time: Another session with Dr. Thredson.


	2. Chapter 2 - Ghost Story

...

"I'm so sorry about what happened," Dr. Thredson told Tate during their session that afternoon. "And for those."

That last referred to the fact that Tate had to wear a restraining cuff belt that shackled his wrists close to his waist. They limited his mobility so extremely that he couldn't even scratch his own nose if he wanted to.

"Hospital protocol," the doctor went on bitterly. "I'm planning to have a chat with Sister Jude about some of the... ways things are handled at Briarcliff. I hope you understand that I don't approve of the way you've been treated."

Tate tipped his head and regarded the man curiously. The teen had a swollen spot purpling on the side of his face where the orderly had hit him earlier but the ache was nothing compared to the pounding headache he had. It made it hard for him to tell for sure but it seemed like the shrink was genuinely indignant on Tate's behalf.

"I appreciate that, doc," he said.

"Are you all right?"

"Yeah," said Tate. "Well. No. My head hurts like a son-of-a-bitch."

Thredson looked thoughtfully at the darkening bruise. "Just where you were hit?"

"It hurts there," the teen acknowledged. "But more toward the top of my head. Like... like a spike being pounded in. Or a knife. Sometimes I get these flashes of light too. Like lightning. Or a camera flash-bulb popping. Whenever that happens I know I'm gonna get a kick-ass headache soon."

"Hmm," said Oliver and wrote the information down for later reference. "Did you have a headache before your struggle with the guards?"

Tate shrugged. "Sort of. The headache's there pretty much all the time. Has been for weeks. Sometimes it's worse, sometimes it's not so bad. The pills they've been giving me make it so I can ignore it most of the time but it's not normally as bad as it right now. This is... bad."

"Would you like something for the pain?"

"Sure, I guess," Tate said uncertainly. He hadn't complained with the idea of getting more drugs but at the moment his head hurt so much, he was willing to risk getting something weird in order to stop the constant, vicious throb. He hoped the doctor would just give him a couple of Codeine pills.

Dr. Thredson excused himself then for a few minutes, leaving a burly red-headed orderly in the office to watch the cuffed teen.

"Seen Star Trek lately?" asked Tate, trying to be friendly.

The orderly said nothing. He just folded his arms and looked serious.

And so they remained in silence. Tate found it interesting how differently each guy approached his job at Briarwood - there were no female guards or orderlies. Some, like the guy watching him, were all business. Others acted more like they were hanging out at the pool hall. It made the teen wonder if there was any formal training in regards to how staff interacted with patients or if it was a 'make it up as a you go' operation.

When the doctor returned, the orderly went back to the hall. Thredson brought a tray of supplies over to where Tate sat. On the tray were a syringe, a length of rubber, some cotton balls, gauze, tape and a small bottle.

"You're not afraid of needles are you?" he asked his patient gently when he noticed the way Tate was eyeing the tray. He pushed up the young man's left sleeve.

Tate watched him, tensing slightly when the man swabbed his arm with a cotton ball soaked in alcohol. It was cold and smelled sterile. "What're you going to give me?"

"Just some Demerol," said Dr. Thredson. He tied the band of rubber tightly around Tate's bicep. "Similar to what you might get at a dental appointment."

"I don't go to the dentist much," admitted Tate. He monitored the doctor's every move keenly. He wasn't entirely sure he wanted a shot and he was running out of time to decide. "It's not going to make me tired, is it?"

"No more so than any other painkiller," said the doctor.

Then with a sharp poke Tate's mind was made up for him. He suffered an instant of panic then very quickly the edge peeled away from his headache. The rapidity with which the pain faded amazed him. While he marveled, the doctor cleaned up his injection gear.

"I like this stuff better than the pills," Tate commented when Dr. Thredson came back to the desk.

The dark-haired man smiled. "I'm sure you do."

"I do."

"I would like to talk to you about your case," said Dr. Thredson more seriously as he settled into his chair on his usual side of the desk. "Do you feel up to it?"

Tate thought about it. He felt really good. The doctor had helped him feel that way. The doctor was a nice man. "Sure."

Oliver reached into his desk drawer and started the reel-to-reel tape recorder that was housed there. He recorded every session with his patients but suspected he might listen to this one again more than once. "How old were you when your father left home?"

Tate was surprised again. He'd expected to be asked about the shooting. "I guess I was around six? Pretty young."

"Your mother said around that time you began to believe your house was haunted."

Tate began to wonder how much the man knew about him. He seemed to know every little obscure thing about the teenager, which was both impressive and creepy to him.

"It _was_ haunted," Tate said earnestly. The drug enhanced his conviction; he knew what he'd lived through and he didn't have much to lose by talking about it in the nut house. "All us kids knew it. My mother knows it too even if she pretends like she doesn't. You can't live someplace like that and not notice."

"Can you tell me about your experiences there?" Oliver lit a cigarette. He considered offering Tate one but the way the young man's hands were bound prevented the him from being able to hold one.

"You got a few days?" Tate smirked and shifted a little in his chair. "Most of the stuff that happened while we lived there was just... It was almost like. Mundane. You know: A room would be cleaned up or stuff would be where nobody put it. Sometimes weird old shit would turn up. Stuff that didn't belong to anybody. You'd hear things. Footsteps. Voices. But there were actually some ghosts you could see and talk to."

The doctor was fascinated by the detail of his patient's schizophrenic view of the world. It gave an interesting definition to murder if the person doing the killing believed the soul could manifest after death. Oliver also found it interesting that the audible hallucinations commonly associated with schizophrenia Tate had rationalized into the form of ghosts.

"How did those ghosts get in your family's house?" asked the doctor.

Tate shrugged. "They came with it."

"Have you seen... ghosts in other places?"

"Who knows?" said Tate after thinking about it. Thinking was becoming a slow, spongy process. "Sometimes it's hard to tell who's dead or not. Sometimes dead people are more lively than living ones."

"Do you think any of your victims might be ghosts now?"

The question hung there for a moment. Then Tate smiled a smile that didn't reach his dark eyes. "The new lady says I've got 'em crawling all over me but I think she's lying."

"Billie Dean," said Dr. Thredson. "She ran a radio psychic show as I understand it. Before... Before she came here." He paused. "Do you think she's wrong?"

"I'd notice if I had a bunch of ghosts on me," said Tate confidently. "It's not something you can miss. No. If any of those people are ghosts, they're probably haunting the college now. Or maybe the hospital. Or graveyard. But probably the school. That's how it seems to work. Dead people get stuck where they die."

His eyes misted over then as he thought about his brother and how he was stuck where he died. Not that Beau had seemed to notice being dead. That was the one bright side Tate had found to the situation: His poor, innocent brother would never comprehend what sort of hell he was in.

"How's your headache?" asked the doctor as he wrote some quick notes about Tate's delusions.

"Oh. A lot better now. Thanks." And it was a lot better. It didn't hurt at all. He felt sort of drunk, in fact. Drunk without being drunk.

"No problem."

Oliver put out his cigarette then lit another one. He got up and brought it around to the front of the desk where he offered it to Tate, close enough to his mouth to make it clear he was willing to help him smoke it but not close enough to be overbearing. Just an offer.

Tate hesitated then he sucked on the cigarette filter. "Thanks," he said.

"You're welcome," said Dr. Thredson. "So... after your father left. It was just you and your mother and your two disabled siblings?"

"Yeah," grumped Tate. He exhaled smoke. "And the ghosts."

"Your mother must've had to work pretty hard to take care of all three of you."

Tate snorted. "She didn't work. The government paid her for Beau and Addie. They wouldn't pay her for me because I was too 'perfect'. You know what? She actually said once that if she could put my brother's brain in my body, she would. Then she'd have the perfect son she always wanted."

"That's an awful thing to say to a child," the doctor said, tone overly bland to mask his surprise. He held the cigarette up again so Tate could have a drag off of it.

"Tell me about it," the teen said after a puff. "No, Constance didn't work. Unless you count screwing the neighbors. Then she did all kinds of work."

"Your mother had a lot of... suitors?"

Tate laughed. "Nobody who'd fit that title. Half of them were already married. She just fucked around a lot."

Dr. Thredson pushed his glasses up, hiding a quick frown. He tended to idealize the role of a mother and it was difficult for him to hear of one being associated with such tawdriness. But as much as he didn't like it, he knew the type existed. It made him feel for his young patient, knowing he had such a bad symbol of motherhood for his only parental guidance as a child.

"No real long term relationships then?" he asked.

"There were some. Which wasn't so bad. It was when she started dating guys that were close to my age that it really got to me," Tate said.

"Did any of them try to tell you what to do?" said Dr. Thredson passively. He offered Tate the cigarette again. "Try to be your father?"

"A couple of the older ones," Tate said after another drag from the cigarette. "Most of 'em weren't around that long though. Just in and out, you know?" He chuckled at his own crude humor.

The doctor obliged him a little smile. Then he said, "I'm going to be speaking with your mother soon. Is there anything you'd like me to tell her?"

"Can I see her?"

"I'm afraid not," said Oliver gently. "You haven't been given visitation privileges yet."

Tate laughed, genuinely amused. "Everything's a god-damned privilege here. Hey. So does that mean any time I don't want to see my mother I just have to act up and my visitation privileges will be suspended?"

"You don't _have_ those privileges," Dr. Thredson reminded. "You should work toward earning them before you start planning ways to abuse them."

Tate grinned, showing both dimples. It was a charmingly roguish smile, considering the circumstances. "Right. I'll work on that, doc."

"Is there anything you want me to tell her for you?"

"Yeah," Tate said, sitting up as much as the cuff belt would allow him. "Tell her... Tell her I need cigarettes. And a sweater. A couple of them. The biggest ones in my closet. Have you been in one of those cells at night? Freeze your balls off. If she can get me an extra blanket, that too. Can she give me one?"

"We'll see," the doctor said. "Is there anything more personal you'd like me to pass on?"

Tate thought about it then said: "Just tell her not to look in that shoebox on the bottom of my closet." More confidentially he told Dr. Thredson, "It's where I keep my Playboys." Seeing the doctor's expression, he grinned. "I read them for the articles. Really! They interviewed Norman Mailer in January. I have an older one where they interviewed Ayn Rand. You know who she is?"

"Atlas Shrugged," Oliver said, citing one of her most well-known novels. "Yes, I know who she is. But I find it hard to believe you're looking at Playboy strictly for the interviews."

"I didn't say that."

"Fair enough," smiled the doctor.

...

* * *

><p>Author's Note:<p>

I know this is a bit shorter than the last couple. The next chapter's longer than normal. It's just how things broke up this time. Sorry about that.

As I'm writing and publishing this fanfic, it's drawing nearer to Halloween and closer to time for American Horror Story's next season to start on television. It's centered around a 20's freak show. I'm on the fence about my expectations. On the one hand, it's almost Halloween and I want my fix of spooky. On the other, I have very high freak standards. I was spoiled by HBO's _Carnivale_. Clancy Brown (the bad guy from Highlander and Pet Sematary 2) was a priest in it. Clea Duvall (Heroes, AHS season 2) is in it too, along with lots of other talented people. The storyline is paranormal meets freaky. It was a great series and I'm a little concerned it set the bar too high for me. We'll see.


	3. Chapter 3 - Wandering the Halls

...

When Tate got out of Dr. Thredson's office it was that weird time of the afternoon when they locked all of the inmates out of their cells. The young man was still under the influence of a potent painkiller but he wasn't zombified like he'd been when he'd drank that noxious liquid the orderly Patrick had given him. He felt pleasantly intoxicated and a little wobbly.

Free to wander, he discovered that the halls were left open so people could access the central wing. He saw a lot of patients just sitting on the floor or leaning against walls in the center intersection, staring vacantly. Most didn't even look at him as he passed. He must have looked just like that the day before. He decided he would never drink that foul-tasting liquid again.

He discovered as he wandered that he women's wing was open for the ladies to come and go but guys were not allowed in it. There was a guard on duty there to prevent men from entering. The same was not true of the men's wing. Besides the guard stationed at the women's wing there was only one other, a fellow who patrolled the halls. Tate shuffled and acted stoned when he passed the roaming security guard. The man paid him no mind.

Tate meandered his way to the nurse's station. The nurse on duty was talking to a doctor and neither paid the teen any mind when he drifted over. He saw a book on the counter left out where anyone could reach it. Curious, he turned it a little so he could read the cover. Embossed in black ink, it read: _Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Second Edition)_.

Thumbing through the interior, Tate was impressed. It had a similar thickness and feel to it as _Grey's Anatomy_. It contained lot of charts and tiny writing. The table of contents had a section devoted to various mental illnesses and their symptoms. He quickly found 'schizophrenia - paranoid type' and looked up the definition. It was like reading a horoscope: He found the definition and many symptoms did fit him but several didn't. Likewise, many of the symptoms could describe anybody.

Still, the book was intriguing. He had just gotten to the section on sexual deviations when the doctor noticed him and took the book away. Tate looked up at the tall gray-haired man, affronted, and was met with a patronizing look of tolerance.

"Not for patients, I'm afraid," he said and handed it over to the nurse.

That made Tate want it twice as much. "Is there a copy in the hospital library?"

"In the library?" the doctor echoed. "I don't know. Possibly."

That's when the teen decided he needed to talk to Dr. Thredson about how to get library privileges. At present, though, he knew he was risking rousing suspicion by not seeming drugged enough so he pretended to lose interest and wandered off. Apparently this was the right thing to do because the doctor went back to talking to the nurse.

It wasn't hard to act high. The Demerol made him feel like he was drifting through a dream. He wasn't entirely sure he wasn't dreaming. His head didn't hurt and neither did the several tender spots where bullets had struck him a month ago. Everything had a detached quality to it.

Tate noticed that a lot of the patients he passed were physically different from the norm, with bulging eyes or mouths that were too small. Also common were twisted limbs and spines. There were bald people and naked people of both genders. Several of them were so spaced out on drugs they didn't bother to cover themselves. None of the naked ones were what Tate would call attractive. He wondered again if they were nude because they were being punished or because they were so crazy that they'd thrown off their clothes willingly. Most of them had such strange looks on their faces, were twitching violently or talking to themselves; he decided quickly that he didn't want to ask them.

He found his way to the common room and was surprised to find it open. The record was playing and there were a few people in there doing what most of the people in the halls were doing: Sitting around staring. Among them Tate saw Harvey. The man was sitting at one of the tables, smoking a cigarette and stacking checkers.

"Hey," Tate smiled as he took the chair on the other side of the table. "You're back. I thought you'd become an un-person."

"Un-person?"

"The school I went to... Sometimes in the middle of the night people would just disappear from their dorms." Tate propped his forearms on the table and laced his hands together, dark eyes intense. "They wouldn't say they were leaving or dropping out. Just one evening they'd be there... the next morning they'd be gone and all their stuff would have vanished from their room. If you asked any of the registry staff they'd say the kid dropped out but who drops out of school and doesn't tell their friends or family? Or go home? Even worse was when they'd pretend like the kid had never been there to begin with. Suddenly they wouldn't have record of the person ever being at the school."

Tate nibbled on a dead cuticle, agitated by the memory. "A lot of the people who disappeared were folks who were against the war. Hippies. Sympathizers. People who talked too loudly about not wanting to conform. They talked too much so they got turned into an un-person."

"Well, they didn't turn me into an un-person," Harvey said. Being a paranoid individual with a tendency to indulge conspiracy theories, he had no problem accepting Tate's story at face value. He believed things about the establishment that tied in nicely with what was said, which only reinforced his own beliefs. "I was just in another wing."

"Did they shock you?"

Harvey shook his head then pushed back the messy dark hair at his temples. There were no burn marks. "Nope. I've been doing some volunteer medical testing. Doctor Heath says if I do this vaccine study, they'll let me go in four months. Groovy, huh?"

Tate looked dubious. "Sounds kind of scary to me."

"You afraid of needles?"

"No," said the teen. "I'm afraid of being a Guinea pig."

"But look at what it did for the guys in Marvel comics," said Harvey with a grin. "The Hulk."

"I don't want to turn green and break buildings every time I get pissed off," said Tate. Although saying it out loud, it actually sounded kind of cool. "I don't trust the medical cult to do what they say."

"Well, I can't blame ya there," Harvey smiled. He lit a cigarette. "But I figure it this way: They're gonna test shit on us anyway whether we like it or not. So I may as well get something out of it."

"They're not going to test anything on us without asking," said Tate, unconcerned. "Hey. Could I bum a smoke?"

Harvey handed the younger man a cigarette and a pack of matches. "Of course they're gonna test shit on you. You're part of a captive audience with an unlimited pool of 'volunteers' that's constantly refreshing itself. You? You're really up shit creek because they've got you forever."

Tate lit a cigarette and frowned at the man. "That doesn't mean they can do whatever they want to me."

"Sure it does. What's to stop them?"

When Tate didn't respond immediately, Harvey nodded as though he'd agreed. Then he glanced around conspiratorially. "There's a slave system, you know," he said quietly.

Tate squinted at the dark-haired guy. "What?"

Harvey nodded sagely. "Some of the doctors, nurses, nuns... they have patient 'assistants'. Doctor Heath's got this blonde gal that I am sure he's banging. Nurse Helen's got that scrawny guy. You know the guy. The skinny one with the long brown hair? Him."

"What about Doctor Thredson?" asked Tate.

"I don't think he has one," said Harvey. "But I haven't seen him much so I don't know for sure."

"Hey, sexy," Shelley said as she came over. She draped herself over Tate's back in a loose hug.

The blond boy smiled but shrugged her off. He didn't need trouble with the orderlies again. Fortunately she was used to such treatment so she didn't take it personally. She just flopped into a chair at the table between him and Harvey.

"Hey, Shelley? Have you heard of patient assistants?" asked Tate.

The blonde girl looked puzzled briefly then nodded. "Yeah. I hear it's not worth the trouble it takes to be one though. Sure you get a lot of extra privileges but you have to do a _lot _of work. And you have to follow really strict rules."

"It's a slave system," Harvey said. "They train up the ones they can. You notice those same people, if they get out, they end up working here. They do. They hire 'em on as groundskeepers and janitors."

Shelley nodded sincerely. "I've seen that," she said. Under the table one of her hands slid into Tate's lap and cupped his crotch. "I saw one guy... they shocked him, gave him a lobotomy then 'released' him. Now he's on the morning garden work crew."

Tate shifted a little in his chair and put out his cigarette. Shelley's hand felt really good even through the institute-issue pants. He glanced around but the few people in the room besides them were off in their own realities, worlds away. Shelley was being very discreet; even Harvey didn't notice.

"Same with the electrician. That old guy?" Harvey said. "What's his name? Jim. Jim used to be a patient here. He got released and now every time the place has electrical issues they have him arrested and put through 'treatment' again just so they can get it fixed for free. Poor guy. He'll never get away."

Shelley's hand opened Tate's fly and dove down his underpants. He covered a gasp with a sudden cough.

"That's part of why I never do more than the menial shit around here," Shelley said, ignoring Tate's reaction without missing a beat under the table. "The more interesting you are, the less likely you are to leave here."

"No shit," Harvey agreed. "Gotta be plain and boring around here."

"So where've you been?" she asked.

Harvey shrugged. His stack of checkers fell over so he started a new one. "Doing some volunteer medical testing for Doctor Heath. He said he'll let me go in four months if I do this study for him. He gave me a vaccine and they're testing it under microscopes to see if it's as good as the old one. Or something like that."

Shelley laughed. "They're not going to let you out." Under the table her hand kept moving, steadily stroking. "Especially if you let them do tests on you."

"'Scuse me," Tate said as he scooted out of his seat. Shelley's hand had gotten him too close to the edge. "Gotta go to the bathroom."

He left the room as casually as he could. Once in the hall he bolted for the bathroom where he pulled his dick out and aimed at the first toilet he got to. He managed to get in three strokes before someone came up behind him and put their arms around him. In a wild moment of fantasy he envisioned it was Violet whose hands moved down over his hips and his stiff dick. But when he turned it was Shelley he kissed roughly and it was Shelley who hiked up her skirt and slid her panties aside for him so he could stuff his cock into her.

It only took a few quick thrusts for him to cum. He knew it couldn't have been terribly stimulating for the blonde woman but she seemed to enjoy it anyway. They exchanged a few quick, sloppy kisses then they put themselves back to rights again before someone found them. They walked back to the common room together sharing conspiratorial glances and stifled smiles.

...

The next day was Saturday. Saturday was like any other day at Briarcliff except that Art Therapy was that afternoon. Tate was hoping to participate, as per Dr. Thredson's request, but his name wasn't on the list posted on the kiosk downstairs.

He looked for John after breakfast meds but the guy had already been taken to the laundry facility. Just about everyone worth talking to had gone to their respective jobs and activities. Apart from Tate there were only a handful of low-functioning retards, complete nutcases and nearly catatonic patients loitering around the commons and halls. The orderlies took advantage of the down time to play some poker at one of the tables in the common room. Tate could tell from their warding looks when he got close that interrupting the game would be bad for him.

Tate spotted Billie Dean sitting at the piano. He weighed the pros and cons of trying to talk to her again. He had nothing else to do though - not even a test pattern to watch on TV - so he went over. When he got closer he could hear that she was playing something very lightly on the out-of-tune keys. It took him a moment of hard listening to part the notes she was playing from the ones cranked out of the record player but when he did he smiled.

"Mozart," he said. "Symphony in D minor."

The woman turned on the bench and stared at him. "I'll admit I'm impressed," she said grudgingly after a moment.

"I took piano as a kid," admitted Tate, shuffling his feet. "I always loved Mozart, you know? His music, his life. He's my favorite composer. His life was so amazing. How about you? Did you take lessons as a kid?"

"When I was little I participated in a few pageants," Billie Dean said with a touch of pride. "Piano was my talent."

"I'd ask you to play louder," smiled Tate. Both dimples showed. "But that thing's so out of tune it would make Mozart sound like shit."

She tried not to smile. She didn't want to find the vulgar young man charming. She reminded herself of the murders he'd committed and no longer felt the urge to smile. "Is there something you want?"

"Just to talk," said Tate. "In case you hadn't noticed, there aren't a lot of people around here who can do that."

"Why did you kill all of those people?" Billie Dean asked bluntly. She needed to know what sort of person could do such a thing before she could even consider talking to him for long. She didn't feel threatened by him, though, which she thought was odd.

Tate considered her questioning eyes and the prim set to her mouth. "It would take a long time to explain it. The short version? I had a screwed up childhood and more recently some really bad headaches. The doctor thinks maybe the drugs I took for the headache that day might've 'adversely affected' my decision-making. He says I'm schizophrenic but really? I just did what a lot of people only wish they could do."

The young woman processed all that, mouth pursing. "You seem awfully blasé about the matter."

His mouth twitched in a smile that exposed a hint of a dimple. "If you were on the drugs they've got me on, you'd find it pretty hard to get too excited about anything either."

She looked at him curiously. The institution was giving her drugs too: Something for her nerves and something to help her sleep in the noisy, unfamiliar place. It kept her feeling calm despite the conditions. She could only imagine what they were giving a criminal like him. And yet he still managed to sound intelligent; conversational, even.

"Would... you kill again?"

"If I had to," said Tate. "But don't worry. I wouldn't hurt you. I can tell you're..."

She looked at him, puzzled and slightly anxious. "What?"

"Real," he said. "A lot of folks, they're... empty inside. They're like... background people. Shadows. But other people, just a few, they're deeper. They're aware on a level so many other people just aren't. You're like that." He paused and peered at her reflectively, his blond fringe hiding one dark eye. "They say you can see ghosts."

"I can," Billie Dean said, tone tinted defensive.

"So can I," said Tate.

She frowned at him, afraid she was being mocked. But he was serious.

"I grew up in a haunted house," he told her. "I talked to dead people every day for years. Some of them were bloodier than others. But most of them were just like anybody else, mostly."

Against her better judgment, Billie Dean felt a spark of kinship with the young man. She knew exactly what he was talking about and had never heard another person say something of the sort. "I hate it when they bleed," she admitted.

He smiled and both dimples showed again. "I asked one once not to be bloody. He got pissed off. I guess they can't control it or something."

Billie Dean caught herself smiling. "Have you ever had one pop up in the back seat of your car?"

"Once," said Tate. "One Halloween this real jerk of a ghost rode with us halfway to the grocery store."

"What did you do?"

"My mother told him to take a hike," said Tate. "She won't admit it but she can see them too."

"Well, that still doesn't excuse or explain what you did," said Billie Dean, reminding herself that she was talking to a murderer, not some boy at the soda shop or a comrade in ESP.

"Doesn't it ever bother you that people laugh at you?" Tate said, suddenly animated with disgust on her behalf. "Doesn't it ever just... get to you knowing- knowing that you can do something _tons_ of people out there only wish that they can do. Only it's them that's getting ahead while here you are. Locked up in a loony bin with..." He smiled a quirky smile. "Murderers and freaks."

She looked away and swallowed. He'd touched a nerve, though she didn't want to admit it.

"People like us," he said. "People like you and me? We're evolved. We're something most people could never be even if you tried to tell them how."

"I'm not like you," the woman said tightly. She got up then and pulled her sweater around herself snugly. She looked like she might say something else but then just turned and left.

Tate watched her go then sat down on the piano bench. He plunked out a few notes of Bach's _Toccata and Fugue_.

..

Lunch was followed by more pills then Tate wandered the halls some more, boredom growing. He saw the same people sitting in pretty much the same places. He wondered if it might be advantageous to take some of the other pills the doctor prescribed, just so the sheer boredom wouldn't get to him. Like the morning, the most interesting people weren't around. Just Billie Dean and a handful of drooling basket cases.

After an hour of doing nothing Tate finally curled up on a couch and slept until dinner time. Despite his earlier cabin fever, though, he threw away all of the dinner pills except the pain pill. Later he tried to dawdle in the bath just because it was stimulation of some sort but the orderlies wouldn't let him linger.

He was herded back to his cell with only a few minutes before lights out. Somewhere down the hall someone was talking loudly to himself. It took a long time for him to shut up. Only then did Tate get some sleep and it was filled with nightmares.

...

* * *

><p>Author's Note:<p>

I thought about trying to jump ahead in the story but it just didn't work. Right now it just has to kind of go day-by-day.

Which means next time we're picking up with Sunday.


	4. Chapter 4 - Meetings

...

Sunday, for Tate, started much the same as Saturday: Breakfast. Pills. Wander the halls and common room. Lunch. Pills. Wander some more. He was astounded by the lack of anything to do. No books, no magazines, nothing to do unless you were in an activities program. There wasn't even a television or a radio. Just the record player in the common room playing that same damned song over and over again.

With evening came dinner and another pill line. Tate skimmed the painkiller and swallowed it before disposing of the rest of the meds in the toilet. Then came a surprise break in the routine: Church.

When he asked, he was informed by a nun that every person who was physically able had to attend church on Sunday evenings. It was mandatory. The chapel at Briarcliff was small but ornate, paneled in dark wood and lined with statues of the saints. While it wasn't large, it was enough to suit the needs of the asylum's patients and staff.

Tate had only been a few years removed from the church so all of the kneeling and mumbling came back to him quickly. He would have gone through the motions but he couldn't kneel while wearing the belt-cuffs. A lot of other patients didn't even try despite having physical freedom to do so. Some performed their own strange interpretations of the acts but most just sat there staring at the Reverend Monsignor while he gave mass.

When he had a chance to glance around, Tate looked for familiar faces. He searched for Violet specifically. Service was almost over by the time he located her. She was on the far side of the room sitting in a pew close to the front. A disappointment; Tate was seated at the back.

After the service ended he had to watch her leave without even a brief exchange between them. He couldn't even catch her eye. There were too many people between them for him to get to her and with the belt-cuffs on he hardly looked presentable anyway. He was one of a few inmates who wore the restraining device. He didn't think it would make a great impression on the girl if she saw him wearing it. So he shuffled back to the ward with the rest of the patients.

Once he was released from his restraints he joined the pill line then headed to his room where he swallowed the Codeine. The rest of the pills went into the mattress. Then he lay there and waited for lights out, daydreaming of Violet and what might happen if circumstances were different. Immediately after lights out he tried to get in a quick jerk and was extremely frustrated when almost immediately there was a light in his face.

"You've gotta be fucking kidding me," he complained.

Keys jingled in the door. He pulled his hand out of his pants.

"Out of the bed," said Sister Jude.

"Come on," Tate objected. He put his hands up in a defensive posture of harmlessness. "This isn't fair!"

"Do you want to get on your knees yourself or do you want me to call Carl in to help you?" said the nun without sympathy.

"This is bullshit!" said Tate as he got out of bed. He knelt beside it, elbows on the mattress. "What, were you just hanging around the halls waiting for somebody to do something?"

"The rules here seldom change," said Sister Jude. "And yet night after night people continue to break them. It's something I've come to expect."

She reached out then and tugged his pants and underwear down in one motion. He winced as the waistband of white briefs caught on his fading erection but he didn't have long to think about that discomfort before the cane cracked down on his exposed skin.

The nun gave him twenty strokes with the polished wooden rod: Fifteen for 'self-abuse' and another five for his vulgar language. Tate tried to take it silently but just as before, when the woman began to cover areas where she'd struck already, he couldn't help crying out.

After she left Tate curled up on his cot and lay there hating the way he felt. He'd pulled his briefs and pants back up and the clothes over the hot welts hurt like a bitch but he stayed dressed just the same. His clothing hid the embarrassing evidence left by Sister Jude's cane.

Briefly he considered masturbating more just to be defiant but he had a feeling that she expected such a move and would immediately bust him again. So he lay there keeping his hands above the covers, hating the feeling of being managed. He angsted over the fact that every other inmate in the ward knew he'd just been punished. And he dreaded the fact that he would have to go sit in Dr. Thredson's hard chair the next day.

...

Early the next morning, Sister Mary Eunice headed briskly toward the Reverend Monsignor's office. She knocked on the door even as she pushed it open, hardly slowing her step.

"Father?" she said. "The patient is here."

"Bring her in," said Monsignor Timothy from where he stood near one of the many bookcases that lined the walls of the small room.

He was dressed for the day in traditional black: Black coat, black pants, black rabat, thin black belt and polished black shoes. Only his Roman collar and the cuffs of his shirt sleeves, visible below the cuffs of his coat, were white in contrast. His hands were clasped behind his back and he only glanced over at her briefly but there was gentle warmth in the wisp of a smile he gave her.

The nun bobbed a nod and disappeared for a moment. She reappeared shortly with Billie Dean. While Sister Mary also wore traditional black befitting a nun, Billie Dean was outfitted in the asylum's standard female-issue blue jumper and white sneakers. She had been allowed to keep a white cashmere sweater she'd brought with her, a nice piece that looked eccentric and garish with her institution garb.

"Thank you, Sister," Timothy said with another small smile.

It took the young nun a moment to realize she was being dismissed. She tried not to let it bother her but she didn't like being dismissed and she had been curious to know what the Reverend Monsignor wanted to speak to the inmate about. She did a stiff little half-bow and let herself out.

When they were alone, the Monsignor looked at Billie Dean. The blonde woman looked back at him, her chin lifting slightly in an outward sign of the defiance she felt.

"Why are you here?" the priest asked her quietly. His expression was placid. Unreadable.

She decided to play along. "I didn't have a choice," she said, primly placing her fingers on her knees. She studied her nails and was slightly dismayed to notice a chip in one lacquered oval. "The police sent me here. They said I was harassing people."

"You could tell the family that you're wrong, you know," he suggested. "That you made a mistake. That you don't really know what happened to their missing child."

"I'm not wrong," insisted Billie Dean. "I wish to God I was. But that child is dead. Her parents should know it so they can focus their efforts on finding the body. Do you have a cigarette?"

"I don't give cigarettes to patients," the priest said.

The woman laughed bitterly. "I'm your cousin."

He gave her a steely look. "While you're here, you're a patient."

Billie Dean frowned at him. "You're just going to forget we're related?"

"Our relation has no bearing on your being here," said Timothy. "What matters is that when you leave here you behave like you don't believe you see ghosts any longer."

Her eyes flickered heaven-ward briefly. "You want me to lie."

He came over and sat in one of the other chairs, scooting close so he could make eye contact with her, his expression imploring. "You were given a gift. An amazing..." He shook his head with awe. "Incomprehensible gift. But you have to use that gift wisely. Perhaps not at all unless absolutely imperative-"

"It's my livelihood," Billie Dean said. "How do you expect me to survive?"

"You could get a job here-"

The woman laughed. "Doing what? Washing dishes? Waxing pews? No, thank you. I could have had menial labor for life if I'd stayed married to Steve." She shook her head. "I couldn't work here even if I wanted to. Too many bad vibes."

"You're going to have to participate in Occupational Therapy here anyway," the Monsignor pointed out. "Maybe you'll reconsider."

Billie Dean gave him a tight smile. "Don't hold your breath."

"People aren't going to believe you once you get out. You've been institutionalized."

"I can always start fresh under a new name somewhere else," she volleyed.

"You're going to move?" The Monsignor tried unsuccessfully to stifle a smile. "Why don't I believe that?"

Billie Dean frowned. "If that's all, I'd like to go back to my room now."

"Very well," said the priest. "But please consider what I've said."

He had an orderly escort the woman back to her ward and wished that chat had gone better.

...

After a restless night Tate was irritable. If his raw backside wasn't bad enough, one of the other inmates kept screaming off and on all night, keeping him from sleeping. The morning's pain pill made life a little easier and a cigarette bummed off of John helped more. By the time the afternoon's pill was kicking in he was feeling almost civil. Almost.

He wanted a nap but he had to go see Dr. Thredson. He knew he was supposed to see the man three times a week but the reality of how often that amounted to was only starting to set in. He gingerly sat himself on the uncomfortable chair in front of the psychiatrist's desk. He knew from the look on the man's face that he already knew what the score was.

"What happened this time?" asked Dr. Thredson quietly.

"Same thing as before," Tate admitted in a casual tone, trying to sound like it didn't matter to him.

But it did matter. He resented the whole situation. He hated the fact that he'd been punished and he hated having to tell on himself to his shrink.

"I see," said Oliver. He pushed his glasses up and fussed needlessly with the papers on his desk. "Please don't be offended but I feel it necessary to ask... Do you masturbate a lot?"

Tate laughed. "Not as much as I did before I got locked up here," he said. Then, realizing what he said might go into his record, he added more seriously: "I'm not a knuckle-shuffle addict if that's what you're getting at. I just have really bad timing I guess. I swear she's hanging around outside my room waiting to hear the springs creak."

Dr. Thredson gave a short, soft laugh. "She does seem to have a knack for being exactly where you don't want her to be."

"Hey, when are they going to stop making me wear these things?" asked Tate, tugging lightly at the belt-cuffs.

"You're on 'yellow' status right now," Oliver confided. "The cuffs will come off when you are restored to 'green'. Just... do what you're supposed to for the next couple of days and you should be fine."

"Green then yellow," Tate mused. "What's after yellow?"

"Orange."

"And then... red?"

"Yes."

"What happens then?" Tate was both repulsed and enthralled by the grade school-level system.

The doctor hesitated. "It depends on the patient. Loss of privileges. Isolation. It all depends."

"Hey, doc. You masturbate. Right?"

"I... do. I feel some amount is healthy."

"The nuns don't think so," said Tate emphatically. "They say it's a sin. It's kind of funny. I grew up thinking that and then I read the scriptures myself? And there isn't anything in the Bible that says you can't do that. The only thing it says is you're not supposed to pull out of a chick to avoid having a baby with her. _That's_ what's a sin."

Oliver nodded slowly. "I understand what you're saying. I'm not a particularly religious man myself. I'm more interested in what I can hear and see before me. I know you were raised Catholic. I'm guessing you don't consider yourself very devout now?"

"Lip service," Tate shrugged. "Before yesterday I hadn't been to church in about four years."

"I see," said the doctor. He lit a cigarette and brought it around to hold to Tate's mouth. "Well, let me reassure you that self-pleasure isn't a bad thing provided it's not hurting anyone and it is done in private."

"I don't have any privacy here," noted Tate as he exhaled.

"No," agreed Dr. Thredson. "And that will continue to be the case for a while. What you did at the college was very... big. You killed a lot of people and no one really understands why."

Tate shifted a little but his thighs and butt were too sore to allow fidgeting. "I already told you why," he said, annoyed.

"No, you haven't," said Oliver in the same gently persistent way as before. "Here. I would like to try something."

He set the cigarette down in the ashtray then reached over his desk to take from a folder a glossy black and white photograph of a young woman. She was a girl just a couple of years older than Tate. The woman in the picture had blonde hair done in a flip and a bright smile. Dr. Thredson showed it to his patient.

"Betty Lou Stone," the man said. "Twenty-three years old. Nursing major. She was eight months pregnant. You shot her twice in the head. Why?"

Tate frowned at the picture. The woman in the picture smiled her frozen smile. She looked like someone out of a magazine in the beauty parlors his mother liked to frequent.

"Andrew Stone," said Dr. Thredson after waiting to see if Tate would say anything. He showed the teen another photograph. This one was of a friendly-looking young man with a Colgate smile and a dimple in his chin. "Betty Lou's husband. A theater major and a youth pastor. You shot him in the chest and head. Why?"

When Tate still said nothing, the doctor pressed harder.

"Did they say or do something that offended you? What did they do to make you so upset that you wanted to take their lives? Had you ever even spoken to them?"

Tate's expression pinched. He didn't like being badgered. "Not them specifically but people just like them. They were two-dimensional clones. Statistics so insignificant, ten years from now nobody'll even remember their names."

"You really believe that?"

"I think I upped their chances of being remembered," said the blond boy confidently. "They're martyrs now. If they'd lived, they would have been nobody."

He glanced at the pictures again and was amazed at how generic they both looked. "Those two don't even look real," he said. "I don't think those are pictures of the people I shot. And even if they are, they aren't really. Those are picture-smile people. There's only one time in a person's life that they sit and look like that and that's when they're in front of a photographer thinking 'I'm having my picture taken'. That's not a person. That's not even a snapshot of a life. That's just a template anybody can fit into."

Inadvertently Oliver had managed to prove Tate's point and feed into his delusions. He could debate with the young man about how the photos were of real people but he could sense that wasn't the way to go. He would have to tackle the subject of the victims when he could get his hands on some photos of them at home doing normal things.

"How's your headache?" he asked to redirect the subject.

"About the same," Tate answered. He didn't show it but he was glad to be off the subject of the shooting. He knew he couldn't put off talking about it forever but he didn't feel like it after the night he'd had. "The pills help but it still kind of hurts pretty much all the time."

"Hmm," said Dr. Thredson as he discreetly put the photos away. "Maybe we need to tweak your medication."

Since he wasn't taking his original medication as prescribed, Tate wasn't sure tweaking it was in his best interest. "Maybe you could just give me more of the painkillers."

"We'll see," the doctor said vaguely. "I need to do some research first."

"That Demerol helped," Tate tried another angle.

"I can't keep giving that to you for headaches," deferred Dr. Thredson. "It's not good for you."

Tate laughed dryly. "And the grip of pills you give me at every meal is."

"It's a work in progress," Oliver admitted. "But we'll find a combination that works for you." He paused briefly, then added: "I've been considering scheduling you to see Doctor Heath. The persistence of your headaches concerns me and I'd like to rule out any possible physical issues."

"What do you mean?"

Dr. Thredson reached over and put the cigarette out as it was starting to burn the filter. "I'd like to rule out possible trouble with your sinuses or... tumors."

"Tumors?" Tate smiled crookedly. "Wouldn't that be fucked up? Well. I always wondered what was inside my skull. I guess I'm okay with you looking at it unless you have to cut me open to do it."

"No," smiled the doctor. "Nothing so crude. I'll talk with Doctor Heath and see what his schedule looks like."

...

**Afternoon, Harmon home**

"How did you think you were going to get away with it?" said Ben, anger frosting his blue eyes.

Violet shrugged then folded her arms over her middle. "I don't know." She actually figured he would find out but she'd thought it would take longer.

"You can't work at the same place as me and me not know it," the man said. "I know you're not stupid so I have to think you were doing it just because I told you not to."

Violet looked away and heaved a sighed. "No, dad." She looked at him then, lips pursed. "I'm doing it because I told you I wanted to. The Reverend Monsignor doesn't have a problem with it. He was happy to have me there."

"Of course he is," Ben said. "But that doesn't mean you should just... give your time away."

"It'll make good resume' material," she said then, a hint of a smile tugging at the corners of her lips.

It was Ben's turn to sigh. He couldn't bring himself to outright forbid her to work at the asylum. He and his wife had always believed in letting their daughter be herself. But he couldn't help worrying, especially when he found out Violet was working there when Monsignor Timothy told him what a fine job she was doing.

"Just... be careful," he said, relenting. "Don't go anywhere in that place alone. Get someone, even me. Okay?"

Violet rolled her eyes but the smile broke through. "Sure, dad."

"And Violet? Don't go behind my back again."

She had the grace to hang her head. "Sorry."

"Uh-huh."

He was already planning to make her truly sorry at work with chores that made scrubbing bedpans look appealing.

...

* * *

><p>Author's Note:<p>

Work's had me going at all hours so I had to rush proof-reading this. My apologies if there are any errors. I'll re-check it later when I have time. Right now I have to jump into bed. As of this writing I have to be back at work in less than 10 hours.


	5. Chapter 5 - Experimenting with Drugs

...

**Briarcliff**

After the nightly pill line more potato chips were handed out in the common room. Tate tried to catch a glimpse of Violet but she wasn't among the staff who were dispensing treats. Disappointed, he opened his bag and started to nibble. While he snacked he watched the other people in the room. Some of the inmates needed staff help to get their bags of chips opened. One guy just hugged his bag and wouldn't let anyone touch it. The singing guy counted each chip before he ate it.

Just a few minutes after he threw away the empty chip bag Tate began to notice a tense feeling in his middle. It was an antsy, energized sensation that made him very fidgety. He wanted to go somewhere only there was nowhere to go. It was like his body was calm but his soul wanted to jump right out of his skin.

He had been careful to spit out all of his pills except the painkiller that evening but when the walls of the common room started to breathe, he decided he must have swallowed something he hadn't meant to. He'd seen subtle optical illusions before but those were tracers and shadows. This was a distorted in-and-out motion, a gentle throb of the wood panels he could see out of his peripheral vision as well as when he looked directly at the walls.

The whole room intensified. Sounds, smells, colors were all bolder and richer and held secret meanings he'd never realized before. He registered the light overhead and after a couple of minutes of gazing at it suddenly understood its relevance in the universe on a whole new level. He not only understood its mechanical function but he understood its fundamental purpose and how, on a karmic level, that light needed to be there else the whole fabric of reality would be altered. It simply wouldn't be the universe as he knew it without that light.

He noticed several of the inmates were beginning to act stranger than they usually did. Singing man was singing but he was doing it while he was stripping his clothes off. Baby doll lady was laying on the floor with her baby doll held above her while she talked to it. The guy who normally banged his head - on something or while sitting - was curled up motionless in a corner like he was trying to hide.

Tate really wanted a cigarette. Bad.

He oriented on the first person he saw who he knew he could get cigarettes from: John.

"I need a smoke," he said. "Can I have one? Please?"

"Sure," the guy said and handed him one.

"Thanks," said Tate and he got it lit. The smoke felt like a cool cotton ball in his lungs. "You know, it's funny. I never smoked before Briarcliff. I hated it. Hate-hate-hated it. But in here it's like... my only hobby." He grinned.

"Your pupils are the size of dimes, man," John said with just a hint of a smile.

Tate blinked a few times. He tried to determine whether John's pupils were dilated but found it hard to focus on the guy's eyes. "I think they slipped me something. It's like Harvey was saying. Fuck. Where is Harvey anyway?"

"I haven't seen him since the pill line," said John.

He and Tate both glanced around. Harvey was nowhere to be seen.

"That guy's a fucking Houdini," Tate muttered and sucked on his cigarette. The glowing ember made him think of a giant lava rock. He wondered what kind of little natives that might live around something like that. He looked at John then and squinted. "Are you feeling okay?"

"Me?" said John. He had been writing but he paused to look at Tate. "I'm fine. How are you feeling?"

"I don't know," Tate said, shifting around in his seat because it felt good to do so. "I think they changed my pills. Something. Something's not right."

He looked around again for Harvey but all he saw was the room's regular compliment of lunatics and retards. He didn't see Shelley either and wondered if maybe the two were off together somewhere. It wouldn't surprise him.

"Do you want to talk to a nurse?" John asked, noticing his fidgeting.

"No," said Tate without really thinking about it. "If they did this to me, I don't want them knowing I know."

John studied him for a moment then nodded and went back to his writing. "If you change your mind..."

.

Within fifteen minutes it was bedlam. Every available orderly and guard had to be summoned to the common room to help restrain and confine patients in varying states of mental corrosion. Tate was one of the last to be hauled off to his cell as he wasn't being a problem. He'd torn up some paper John had given him and had put together a paper Pong set on the floor that he happily played with during the riot. He didn't even notice the situation until an orderly tried to pull him away from his fun without so much as a word. Max just grabbed him by the arm and started dragging him toward the door.

"Hey!" Tate objected.

He tried to pull away, which was a mistake. The big man twisted the teen's arm painfully behind his back and used it to steer him to his cell. The orderly wouldn't answer any questions no matter how loudly Tate shouted them. He just shoved him into his room and locked the door.

Tate crowded up to the tiny window in the door to peek out. He could see the chronic masturbator in the cell across from him pressed to his cell door window as well. Shouts echoed in the hall, as did the sound of crying and singing. Doors slammed. Keys jingled. More doors slammed. Then the only sounds were from the inmates.

The whole thing felt like a weird dream. Strange sounds echoed in the hall, distorted and hollow and distant. Tate tried to lay down but he was too full of energy to stay still for long. He sat up and ran his hands through his hair and noticed he was sweating. He didn't feel hot but he was definitely sweating.

He got up and paced. Then he looked for something to make a new Pong set out of but the only thing he had in the cell were his hidden pills. He didn't want to get caught playing with them so he left them in the bed. He thought about pulling some stuffing out of the mattress but if he got caught, it might lead them to the pills.

So he paced some more.

Tate spent the next seven hours pacing, singing, and watching shapes that didn't exist move in the darkness. At one point he narrated a whole original episode of Star Trek to himself. He exercised. He thought about jerking off but several times through the night he thought he saw someone peeking in through the window his cell door. They always left too quickly for him to tell who they were.

..

Isolated in her cell, Billie Dean curled up in the corner of the cold room, arms around her knees. Her feet were bare; she couldn't stand the feeling of having them covered at the moment. Unlike most of the inmates, she knew what was happening to her - roughly. She'd dropped acid more than once before - good, medical-grade stuff, so the effects weren't unfamiliar. What she didn't understand was _why_ she was feeling it. She knew from the behavior of the other patients that she wasn't just having a major flashback. So she had to assume they'd all been given it. But again... why?

She had no idea how long she was crouched there on the floor before she noticed a shadowy figure standing in the far corner of the room, near the door, where the light from the window didn't reach.

Billie Dean's plucked brows furrowed delicately. "Who... who are you?"

The figure didn't move or speak but suddenly the woman knew that it wasn't alive. The temperature in the room dropped about ten degrees when the shadowy form moved forward. When it did, the moonlight exposed the features of a girl of about twelve years of age. Her hair was lank and filthy, the color of moldy straw, and framed a skinny, ashen face. Her eyes were palest blue and sunken into a face that may have been pretty once but was so emaciated and devoid of life that her natural beauty had faded away. She wore one a hospital gown similar to ones Billie Dean had seen on some of the other patients at Briarcliff. It hung on her small frame like a sack.

Despite the girl's condition - or rather because of it - Billie Dean's heart softened and ached. She was as used to seeing ghosts as a person could get so the appearance of one in a place like the asylum wasn't that surprising to her. But the girl's frail condition indicated to the medium that she had died tragically and the thought of a child dying in one of Briarcliff's nightmarish cells was too much for her chemically heightened emotions. Tears spilled down her cheeks.

"Did you die here?" she whispered, reaching one hand out toward the silvery specter.

The child ghost drew closer but didn't reach back. She motioned to the cell door with one scrawny hand.

Billie Dean wiped the back of her hand across her wet cheeks and looked to where she pointed. She shook her head and looked back to the girl ghost. "I can't. I'm locked in."

The girl clasped her hands together and pressed them to the center of her chest. She moved closer to the door, backing toward it with a forlorn expression. Billie Dean followed her and when she got close, the ghost slipped through the door.

Billie Dean looked out through the window in the door but the ghost was gone. She stood there for a while, looking this way and that, but the only thing out in the hall was the sound of other inmates struggling with their hallucinations. After a while she moved away from the door and back to the corner where she sagged back down, back to the intersection of the walls. She pulled her knees up and hugged them and watched the door the rest of the night.

...

**Tuesday morning**

Sister Jude wrung her hands as she hurried down the upstairs hall and down the wing where the full-time staff had their personal rooms. When she found he wasn't in his office, she had tracked Monsignor Reverend Timothy to his chamber. Ordinarily she wouldn't disturb him while he was there but she needed to speak to him about the condition of the patients following the LSD debacle. She was nervous about what she was going to say. She knew the Reverend Monsignor was already upset about the 'accident' caused by the research department; her news would only bring added stress for him.

The hallway was empty, silent except the soft whisper of her quick footsteps on the old wooden floor. The door to the priest's room was at the far end of the hall next to a large window that would be picturesque were it not for the massive amounts of bars securing it. Sister Jude lifted a hand to rap on his door, her other hand clutching her rosary for strength, but she hesitated when she heard a sound.

She listened with her hand still poised to knock and discovered she could hear him speaking. Leaning close to the door she could tell the Monsignor was praying, and quite feverishly. His words were punctuated again by the sound she'd first heard: The sound of leather on skin.

Sister Jude lowered her hand and then, as the sound of another lash striking flesh reached her through the door, she realized he was a self-flagellant. Theirs was an order of the devout that she respected dearly though she didn't personally prescribe. She was more comfortable correcting others. But hearing the man she admired punishing himself - surely for the mess that had happened with the drugs and the patients - only made her admire him more. Her hand moved from her rosary to her breastbone, touched by his devotion and passion.

She decided that she could wait till later to approach him about the deaths of two of the patients.

..

Tate still hadn't slept when the sun finally crept up to light the room. At first he thought it was another hallucination but after a while he could accept it was in fact morning. That conclusion was confirmed when Patrick brought him in his breakfast tray. The pill cup on it had a different variety of tablets.

"What's with the pills? And what the fuck was with last night?" he demanded, in no mood to be polite.

Patrick hesitated. Technically he wasn't supposed to engage the patients in conversation at all but he didn't see how it could hurt to tell someone like Tate what had happened. Who would he tell that would be believed by anyone who would care?

"Last night's snack somehow got mixed up with the stuff that had some experimental LSD in it."

The presence of the medical-grade hallucinogen in the chips that were given to the inmates was no accident, but as far as Patrick knew, it was. He was not on the 'need to know' list.

"Acid?" Tate's head thumped back against the headboard of his bed. "They gave us acid?" He laughed. "Wow. Screw acid. That shit was as bad as the that liquid stuff you gave me that one time. Sign me up for the THC experiments instead."

"I think there are some," the orderly said. "You'd have to talk to Doctor Heath."

Tate had only been joking. It was amazing to him how easy it was to get drugs in the nut house. Dr. Thredson had already said something about having him see Dr. Heath so Tate made a mental note to ask the man about THC trials when he met him.

"What's with these?" he asked, poking at the pills again.

"Well, one should help you get some rest after... last night. Two are your regulars and one's a swap for the other one. You won't be getting it any longer."

"What about the white round one? Where's it?"

"You're done with those, I guess. Your doctor didn't have them on the list."

Tate frowned. "Are you sure? I think there's been a mistake."

"I can ask," said Patrick.

"Do it soon, okay?"

"When I see him."

When orderly left Tate looked at the pills then at the tray of unappealing breakfast. He wondered which of the pills was the one that would help him sleep and which was the 'exchange' pill. The other two he recognized and could rule out. So there was at least a fifty-fifty chance of getting something that would scramble his brain if he took one of the remaining ones.

After staring at the pills for a long time he finally took both of the uncertain ones. He stowed the others in the mattress then forced himself to eat his breakfast. Then he lay back down on his bed and waited. What was the worst that could happen?

By the time Patrick returned for his tray, Tate was out like a light.

He had bizarre dreams: Foggy visions and confusing fragments of conversations, urgent matters he couldn't understand. He thought his mother was there for a bit, petting his hair. Then a while later he thought there was a whole bunch of people standing around him dressed in black robes who wanted to steal his clothes.

The most unnerving was a moment when he thought there was a person standing at the foot of his bed. The individual was tall, dressed in man-clothes and wore a weird flesh mask over their face.

"Don't be afraid," the person-thing whispered. Its voice was gravelly, masculine and muffled. Blood dripped from the flesh mask as he spoke. "I want to help you."

It was one of the few things Tate would remember later about the nine-hour sedation.

...

**Wednesday**

At breakfast Tate was groggy and irritable. After nine hours of bizarre dreams and visions, his headache was back, full force. He hurt all over, really: His head, his nearly-healed bullet wounds, his ass and thighs.

He tried to ignore the other people around him but it was difficult to tune out the jabber and nonsense. He would have liked nothing better than to stay in bed all day and be left alone but that wasn't an option. That pissed him off. He knew he had to see Dr. Thredson later that day and he intended to complain bitterly about the situation then.

"It's a real drag we got put away so quick," Shelley said. "I was just starting to have fun."

"I'm sorry I passed on the chips," said John with a half-smile. He didn't look up from his writing.

"Harvey's gonna be pissed he missed it," muttered Tate, unable to resist being drawn into the conversation. "Where the hell is he anyway? I swear to God that guy's like Spiderman. Every time things get weird, he disappears."

"Maybe he's in Heath's ward," John suggested.

They had to line up for pills then. The medication Tate was handed was the same as last night's and was missing the painkiller he'd come to expect. He frowned.

"These aren't my pills."

"They are now," the nurse said without concern.

"No," said Tate. "I'm missing the white one."

The nurse looked at her paperwork then at the pill cup. "Nope. All there."

Tate felt the urge to throw the pills at her but he checked it with some effort. "This is fucked. I'm going to complain to my doctor."

"You do that," she said impassively.

Irritated, Tate didn't even bother to fake taking the pills in front of her. He just took the whole cup away from her window. It wasn't until he got to the common room with it that he realized he still had the little cup. He held onto it till he could slip off to the bathroom and dump the contents in the toilet. He kept the cup; it might come in handy at some later point.

...

"Thank you for your time, Sister," Oliver said as he sat down at her desk.

Her office was spacious but sparse. The primary furnishings in the room were a wooden desk, two chairs and a large oak cabinet near the door. He knew it contained her collection of canes and paddles and he deliberately didn't look at it because of that.

"What is it, doctor? I have a lot to do," the nun said.

The psychiatrist folded his hands over one knee and lifted his chin a little. "I would like to discuss the manner in which you deal with the patients here. I'm speaking specifically about the use of corporal punishment."

"What about it?" asked Sister Jude. She also folded her hands, hers over the top of her desk.

"It isn't effective!" he said. "It's counter-effective, in fact."

"It's the only language some of the people here understand," Sister Jude said with thinly veiled disgust.

"Tate Langdon is a well-behaved patient," Oliver insisted. "Beating him till he can't stand because he was masturbating is hardly helpful. It hasn't made Phil Crowley stop. He's worse than ever."

"Phil's an exceptionally stubborn man."

Dr. Thredson gritted his teeth and pushed his horn-rimmed glasses up. "Where's your compassion?"

Sister Jude actually smiled at that. "That young man murdered thirteen people for no reason. You can't cure viciousness like that, doctor. You can't drug that kind of evil out of a person. And I certainly don't feel sorry for him."

"You're wrong," said Oliver, getting to his feet. His dark eyes were deadly serious. "He isn't evil. Or incurable."

She scoffed a laugh at him as he left her office. His ears were burning as he moved quickly down the hall. He knew he had lost that debate but he hadn't lost confidence in his convictions. If anything he was more determined than before.

...

When Tate was taken to his session with Dr. Thredson the orderly didn't put the belt cuffs on him but he was too irritated to be glad of that fact. He sat down in the chair he tended to favor and glared at the man in the glasses who was sitting on the other side of the desk. Dr. Thredson had his white lab coat on and a dark brown tie that reminded Tate of a noose.

"How are you today, Tate?" the doctor asked once he had the reel-to-reel tape recording.

"I hurt," said the blond teen bluntly. His dark eyes were accusing. "You changed my medicine and now I hurt. A lot."

"I'm sorry," said Oliver sincerely. "I made an appointment for you with Doctor Heath tomorrow and he wants you off painkillers for a full twenty-four hours."

"But I hurt."

"I understand," Dr. Thredson said gently. "And I'm sorry about that. The best I can do is give you a sedative to help you sleep tonight. But hopefully tomorrow we'll have some solid answers."

"Until then I just have to be in pain," grumped Tate.

"I have some good news," the doctor said to try and get his patient's mind off the matter. "Your mother and I were able to arrange time to meet and she sent some things for you. I'm afraid the guards confiscated the cookies but... Well. Here."

He reached in the nook under his desk and pulled out the small security-inspected box. He set it on the desk and pushed it across where Tate could reach it if he wanted to.

The boy eyed it for a moment then took it, bringing it to his lap where he poked through the contents. He smiled when he found two of his favorite sweaters - ones that had belonged to his dad. That was a surprise. He hadn't expected her to send those ones. There were also a couple of packs of cigarettes (opened and searched) and a couple of boxes of matches, some stationary and a pencil.

"I'm afraid you don't have correspondence privileges yet," said Dr. Thredson. "But you can write letters to your mother if you like and I can save them aside until you do."

Tate was boggled again by the system's idea of privilege. "No phone, no mail, no visitors. Prisoners get better treatment."

"I know it seems harsh," the psychiatrist said. "But it's for your protection. You need to focus on getting better."

"But you said there was no cure."

"And I also said that doesn't mean you can't learn to live with your condition," Thredson reminded. "And once you've learned how, you _will_ live better."

"What'll help me live better is if I could get permission to use the hospital library," Tate suggested.

Oliver smiled. "I would love to grant you that permission."

"But..?"

The man's smile waxed regretful. "I can't. That's a privilege you have to earn as determined by Sister Jude."

Tate groaned. "Of course." He glowered then. "You know what? You people owe me that much at least for slipping all of us that LSD the other night."

"What?"

"The acid they slipped us in the chips," Tate said.

Oliver wasn't sure what to think. "I... haven't heard anything about that."

"Of course," repeated Tate. He was so angry he felt sick to his stomach. "If you ask around they'll probably deny it but ask the patients. Not the staff. The patients will tell you."

"I'll check into that," said Dr. Thredson - and he definitely would. He wasn't sure if he was dealing with Tate's paranoia or if something else happened overnight.

"So what did my mother say to you?"

"She didn't say much that would be useful to you right now," Oliver said, keeping up with the sudden back-shift in topics though he did find it odd. "Just that... she hopes you feel better soon and that she loves you."

Tate snorted a soft laugh. "Yeah. Right. I'm sure she's thrilled to have me out of her hair. Her and her boyfriend."

Dr. Thredson looked at the young man and folded his hands on his desk. "I... don't believe she's seeing him any longer. Not since... Not since you set him on fire."

"Really?" Tate perked up. "Did she tell you that?"

"Something like that," said the doctor.

He was speaking slowly, trying to decide as he went just how much to tell his patient. He was hoping Tate would take it as good news. Fortunately for him, the blond youth did.

"Wow. If I'd known that would break them up I'd have done it a long time ago."

Only after the words were out did Tate think maybe that wasn't something to say out loud.

"Is their relationship part of why you did what you did?" Dr. Thredson wasn't about to let that go.

Tate chewed on his thumbnail. "I don't know. Maybe." He sat up then, suddenly offended and angry. "The bastard killed my brother. He got what he deserved."

Oliver arched his thick brows. "Beauregard died from a respiratory ailment," he said, again speaking slowly.

"That's a fucking lie," grouched Tate. "It's what he and my mother said but it's not true. That son-of-a-bitch killed him."

The doctor jotted down some notes and managed not to sigh. He tried to blame this new delusion on the fact that he'd been forced to abrupt remove the painkillers from Tate's medicine plan. He hoped that was the case.

"Why didn't you call the police?" he asked patiently. There was nothing to do but play along for now and hope.

"The cops already thought I was trouble," Tate said, sulking. "They never would've believed me over them." He paused. "You believe me. Right?"

Oliver offered him a serious look. "I believe that's what you believe happened. I would have to investigate the matter more before I could tell you whether I believed it was the case myself."

"Will you?" asked Tate with growing hope. "Investigate?"

The doctor was surprised. He hadn't meant to volunteer for that. He considered it for a moment then gave the young man a tolerant smile. "I'll see what I can do. I'll let you know what, if anything, I find out."

...

* * *

><p>Author's Note:<p>

So this chapter comes right after Freakshow's premier. The first thing I said to folks after watching it was I'd have to ramp up the sex and weird violence in future episodes. Heh. What an opener!

This chapter was inspired by real-life events. Back in the late 70's federally-funded state asylums administered test drugs to patients without their knowledge or consent. Many of those tests involved LSD and THC. In some cases the tests were to see how easy it would be to 'mind control' someone on those high-potency versions of drugs. The documentation is largely declassified now as the tests weren't viewed as a success. Gee. I wonder why.

A side note: Bedlam was a shorthand term for Bethlehem, the first huge and truly vile asylum. It dated back to the 1800s and in the early days even had oubliette-like dungeon levels for the inmates nobody wanted to deal with. There was no attempt to rehab the patients in 'Bedlam'. Inmate control was managed with large hoses and torture. As such, the place was generally a chaotic and crazed place of pain and misery. It's because of this that we use the term 'bedlam' to describe chaotic insanity on a large scale. Check out _Bram Stoker's Dracula_ - the insane asylum where Seward works is very much like Bedlam.

Stay tuned for the next chapter. I thought it was going to be the last but apparently it's the 2nd to last one this episode.


	6. Chapter 6 - Inside Tate's Head

...

**Thursday**

It had been another rough night for Tate. The screams and other noises from the ward kept waking him. His headache, body pains, and the craving for pain pills made him miserable. As such, he was downright surly when the orderly woke him for the trip to the cafeteria. At breakfast he hunkered down over his food and spoke to no one. Afterward when it was time to line up for medicine the orderly had Tate stand aside; no pills at all for him that morning. When he asked why, the man just told him it was Doctor Heath's orders.

After the pill line was done and the other patients were in the common room, Carl escorted Tate to Dr. Heath's ward. The teen hoped the doctor might give him something for his brutal headache. Before Briarcliff the pain had been maddening and interfered with his sleep but it had gotten a lot worse since he'd come to the hospital. The medication he'd been getting had buffered him from the full force of the pain. He hadn't realized how much the pills had been helping till he was forced to deal with the headache full-strength. Once again he craved those little round white pills.

Carl took Tate to a small examination room that held an examining table, a couple of chairs, a rolling stool, a sink, some cabinets and a lot of medical equipment. There were more lights and gadgets around than he could count at a glance. He was curious about the place but his headache made him not feel like asking about what was in the cabinets or what the equipment did. He didn't want to talk more than absolutely necessary. Talking hurt his head.

The room was cold. The chair was hard. Tate was beginning to think he'd be better off battling the headache in the commons. At least there he could curl up on a couch and sleep. He glanced at the examining table. It looked even more uncomfortable than the chair he sat in. So he just propped his arms on his thighs and shut his eyes where he sat.

There was a cursory knock at the door and a man wearing a white lab coat let himself into the room. He was armed with a clipboard, a file folder of papers and a stethoscope draped around his neck. He looked pretty average to Tate: Salt-and-pepper gray hair trimmed in a Mr. Rogers cut, typical height and build, boring black slacks beneath the lab coat.

"Good morning," the man said. "I'm Doctor Heath. It's nice to meet you, Tate."

Carl faded back, keeping out of the way without actually leaving the room. He had orders to stick around in case Tate reacted badly to being suddenly taken off his medication. They didn't know he hadn't been taking the pills regularly. The only thing he was battling was his pain and a growing addiction to painkillers.

"Hey," Tate responded. He was in too much discomfort to put on friendly airs.

"Please sit on the table," the doctor said.

Tate complied, moving slowly to avoid jarring any of his hurting spots. Dr. Heath pulled an instrument from his pocket that looked like a metal rod capped with a tiny funnel that had a thick lens set into it.

"Doctor Thredson tells me you've been having headaches."

"Yeah," said the younger man. "Pretty much non-stop for a couple of months. It's really intense right now. They didn't give me my pills."

"Yes," said the doctor with a tone of sympathy. "Sorry about that but it was necessary. I need to address your symptoms without the influence of medication." He used the funnel-lens to look in Tate's mouth, nose and ears. "Tell me about your headache. How does it feel right now?"

The teen thought about it, mouth thinning to a grim line. "It feels like my brain's being squashed. Like there's this big... thing. Like a foot. Right here." He pointed to the top of his head where the pain was always worst. "And it's just pressing down on me, trying to make me pop. But there's also this... I don't know. It's like sharp ice under that. It feels better when I'm on the pills but they don't really make it go away. They just make it so I can ignore it. That stuff Doctor Thredson gave me... Demerol? That made it stop."

"When did the headaches start?"

"I guess about three months ago?" Tate tried not to fidget when the man put the tool away and started feeling his throat. Dr. Heath's hands were cool and dry. Gentle. "No. Longer than that. I would get these little ones. Like migraines with these flashes of light. But it was mostly just pressure. Like going down in an elevator. But about three months ago they got worse. More frequent. Longer. It's been pretty much constant for over a month now but it hurts a lot worse now than it did before I got here."

Dr. Heath put on his stethoscope and put it to Tate's chest. "Take a few deep breaths." When he was satisfied with that exercise he pulled out a pen light and shined it at the teen's eyes. "Look up at the ceiling. Now down at the floor. Look at my finger over here. Follow it with your eyes, keeping your head still. Does it hurt more when you move your eyes?"

Tate thought about it. "No. But that light's really bothering me."

The doctor turned it off and shoved it back in the breast pocket of his white coat. "We're going to need to do some scans. We have a machine here... it's like a big x-ray machine. We can use it to take images of your brain, to see if there are any physical abnormalities present."

Tate's brows knit. "Seriously?"

Dr. Heath nodded and smiled. "When you're funded by the government, you get some neat toys to play with."

"Does it hurt?"

"Not at all," assured the doctor. "You just lay down on a table and we slide you into the machine. It hums a bit and then you're done. Simple as that."

For reasons he couldn't define, Tate felt leery. "And you're sure it's safe?"

"Absolutely. They've been using the technology in the army for years."

Somehow that didn't make Tate feel better. "When're we going to do it?"

"Today," said Dr. Heath. "As soon as we're finished with this preliminary exam."

"That quick, huh?"

"With your history, I don't see any point in delaying."

The doctor wrote some things on his clipboard then set it and the file folder on the counter. He pulled out a viewing gown and handed it to Tate.

"You can leave your briefs on," he said. "I'll be back in a minute."

The doctor stepped out of the room with his files then, leaving Tate alone with Carl. The boy eyed the viewing gown with repulsion. He wasn't keen on giving up his clothes for the hated gown but the orderly was giving him the stink-eye so he stripped down and put the thing on. He tried to take consolation in the fact that he still had his underpants on. That small bit of cloth made a big difference.

Dr. Heath returned shortly and the three of them headed down the hall. It was an underground hallway, one of the many subterranean passages that connected the buildings above. It was a brilliant way of moving patients from area to area with little risk of escape. It gave Tate the impression of being in a medieval dungeon.

The room they came to was large and dimly lit with a step-down floor of smooth, dark concrete. The center of the room was dominated by a huge circular device with a rectangular platform jutting out of it on one side. To the left of the device was a control booth where a man stood fiddling with knobs.

"Holy shit," Tate breathed. "It's just like Star Trek!"

"Indeed," said the doctor without comprehension. He wasn't a sci-fi fan. "All right, Tate. Just lay down here." He motioned to the rectangle platform.

Tate stretched out on the platform. There was a small pillow for his head, which he appreciated as the platform itself wasn't padded and therefore very hard. He shivered.

"Try to hold very still," the doctor advised. "You're going to slide into the machine and you'll be there for about fifteen minutes. Please do not move. If you move, we'll have to start again. Can you hold still for fifteen minutes?"

"Sure," Tate said. "I'll just take a nap."

"Just don't move," said the doctor. Then he motioned to the tech in the booth.

The platform's movable top slid slowly into the wide circular mouth of the device. Tate felt like he was entering a space pod. For just a moment he felt claustrophobic then he shut his eyes and pretended he was on Star Trek. The lights inside the machine were incredibly bright. He could see red through his eyelids and the shadows of capillaries running through them. There was a whirring sound of what he presumed to be a camera moving around, back and forth, thrumming like a giant jet-propelled heart.

He tried to daydream but it was impossible to think about anything but the light, the noise and the throbbing pain in his head. After a while he also became aware of the discomfort of laying on the hard platform. The pillow was nice but he was cold and the hard bed made it difficult to hold still. He tried to tell himself that if he moved, laser beams would carve him up. It didn't really help him keep still but it did amuse him.

About the time he was wondering if they'd forgotten him, the whirring thrum stopped and the lights dimmed. He felt himself moving again. When he opened his eyes he was looking up at the ceiling of the big room. It seemed even dimmer than it had before.

The tech nodded to the doctor and then the man escorted Tate back to the examination room. The teen found himself once more alone with Carl the orderly in the small room. It was even less interesting than the first time and this time he was feeling more chatty.

"Is it true there's a nurse in the registry who fucks patients?" he asked, partly to kill the boring silence and partly to be crude. He didn't expect he'd offend Carl but it was a quick way to gauge the man's temperament and understand his personality better.

"Yeah," the orderly said, immune to crudeness. "Her name's Wanda. Big-boned old bitch of the first floor. But she wouldn't touch you, if that's what you're thinking."

It sort of was what Tate had been thinking. Not because he had an interest in older Amazonian nurses but because he was hoping that the rumor he'd heard was true: If he had sex with her she would sign papers to let him go. Being disregarded as a candidate so quickly annoyed him. Tate didn't think of himself as the best-looking guy on the planet but he knew he was better looking than the standard inmate he'd met at Briarcliff.

"Why not?" he said, trying to sound like it didn't bother him.

"She likes men," Carl smirked. "Not boys."

"I'm nineteen," said Tate indignantly.

The orderly stifled a snicker.

"I'm not a kid!"

A cursory knock came at the door and Dr. Heath stepped in. Carl immediately went back to looking stoic and bored.

"So do I have a hole in my head or what?" Tate asked the doctor, picking at a loose thread on the seam of his pants as he tried to shed the irritation left by the brief exchange with the orderly.

The doctor took a seat on the rolling stool and glanced through the file folder he held. "We won't get the results back for a few days," he said, distracted. He was reading. "Until then..."

He paused and lapsed into silence while he read whatever it was that he found so interesting in the file folder. Tate craned his neck but he couldn't read the tiny writing from where he sat and the chart's layout was foreign to him. So he had to wait.

"I'm going to suggest some changes to your medication," Dr. Heath said finally, in a tone that sounded like he was thinking out loud. "Doctor Thredson can tell you at your next meeting if he makes the changes."

"Can you give me something for the headache?" asked Tate, instantly alert to an opportunity. "It really hurts. A lot. Like. I kind of want to slam my hand in the door a few times because that would hurt less and give me something else to think about."

"Yes," said Dr. Heath. "Of course. We'll go with something general for now until we know exactly what we're dealing with. If it turns out to be migraine-related we'll probably shift you onto a triptan medication. But if we're dealing with cluster or tension headaches, we'll have to go another way. My suspicion is it's vascular."

Tate had been hoping the doctor would give him something immediately but Dr. Heath just wrote some stuff down and then closed the file folder.

"All right, Tate," he said. "That's about it. Do you have any questions?"

He probably had some but the teen couldn't scrounge them up immediately. "No. I guess not."

"All right then. I'll see you when we get the results back. Carl, would you please escort Tate back to his room?"

Carl did just that and Tate lay on his bed for a while, staring at the ceiling with his hands clasped over his forehead. It didn't really help the pain but it made him feel like he was trying to do something about it. It was the longest stretch of stone-cold sober he'd been in weeks.

It was awful.

His head pounded. His body ached. He wished he could sleep but he was too miserable. He couldn't find a way to lay that didn't make him feel worse. He thought back to the day on the observation deck at the clock tower and wondered why he hadn't died there. It would have been so much better that way.

Then he wondered if he _had_ died and this was purgatory. It wasn't what he'd been brought up to believe the afterlife was supposed to be like but he'd never really believed in heaven or hell. Maybe it was just the pain that made it seem possible. His eyes watered but he wasn't crying. It was just pain leaking out the corners of his eyes in liquid form that dampened his temples.

He didn't know how much time passed before the door opened and orderly Max came in. Tate squinted at him without lowering his hands. He didn't want to get out of bed and was ready to put up a protest if he was told to.

"Roll over, sunshine," the man said. He had a hypodermic needle in one hand.

"What is that?"

"Something for your pains," said Max. "Doctor Thredson's orders. Now roll over and show me some cheek."

Tate silently blessed Dr. Thredson and his merciful attention. Then he eyed Max. "Does it have to go in there?"

"Yep."

Somehow Tate doubted that but he craved relief more than he wanted to be right so he rolled over. After a brief hesitation he tugged his pants and briefs down. Even though he was facing away from the other guy Tate still shut his eyes in embarrassment - not because he was showing his ass to another man but because of the cane stripes that still marked his skin.

Max was used to seeing marks like that though and didn't even take note of them. He just jabbed the needle in the teen's right buttock and pumped the contents of the hypodermic into the muscle. Then he pulled the needle out and gave the spot a firm swat that made Tate yelp.

"That hurt!" the blond youth exclaimed, yanking his pants back up.

"Had to set the medicine in," the orderly said smugly.

Tate doubted that too but settled for glaring at the man instead of arguing. He was already starting to feel much better. It astounded him how fast intravenous liquids worked on a body.

Max left. Tate rolled onto his back and looked at the ceiling some more. The pain relief flowed over him like a cool waterfall. His anger at the orderly melted away to nothing. Everything else soon followed and eventually his thoughts slowed into sleep.

..

_(Listen to 'Dollhouse' by Melanie Martinez along with this segment.) _

The sky was the color of winter. Evening was coming and the shadows stretched long across the pavement. At the end of the cracked street a vacant lot had been transformed by a traveling carnival. There were a handful of rides just coming to life, their lights beginning to sparkle in the dusk. Crowds of people milled between them and the small game and food stands sprinkled between them. Striped tents poked up here and there, housing fortune tellers and souvenir stands.

But Tate couldn't find the entrance.

Everywhere he looked, the tents and machines blocked his access. He went all around the perimeter of the carnival but there was no way in. Yet other people seemed to be coming and going without a problem.

He tried following a dark-haired mother and her small daughter. The child held a green balloon on a string that bobbed as she toddled along. The pig-tailed girl tripped and released the balloon. It quickly disappeared into the darkening sky. The girl cried but the mother didn't even pause. She just kept walking, dragging the little girl along behind her. Then a large man carrying a box of popcorn passed between Tate and the pair and when the man was gone, so were the mother and child. And still there was no way into the carnival.

He saw a dwarf in a suit waving people toward the carnival, a little blond guy with a Bavarian accent and a squeaky voice as small as he was. Tate headed toward him thinking he looked like someone who would know the way in.

"Where's the entrance?" he asked.

The little man looked up at him with black, beady eyes. "What are you doing? You're supposed to be ready!"

Tate blinked. The man grabbed him by the hips and physically shoved him toward the back of a large, scuffed tent.

"Go!" the man squeaked angrily. "Hurry!"

Tate went over to the tent and found when he got there that there was a flap that looked closed from a distance but in actuality wasn't laced up. He opened the flap and ducked inside. The interior of the tent was lit with kerosene lanterns. Several people moved about within, scurrying this way and that, getting ready for a performance. They were dressed in shades of gray and blue with feathers and glittery things, outfits suited for acrobats. Their makeup echoed the colors of their outfits but instead of looking merry, their styles ran toward macabre and bizarre.

"Get ready!" one of the costumed women snapped at him.

Through the weird makeup on her face Tate was startled to realize it was his mother. She shoved a bundle of cloth into his arms and then she was lost to the bustling group of people in the tent.

"You can't leave, you know," said another made-up acrobat. This one had Violet's eyes and voice beneath the weird costuming. "They've got you forever."

Then she too was gone. He dropped the pile of clothes and turned to duck out through the tent flap again. Suddenly he was inside the carnival. All around him lights glittered and weird music swirled. He could smell cotton candy and decay.

Then he noticed the people.

All around him the festival-goers wore the faces of the people he shot from the clock tower. They were all visibly dead, bloody and disfigured, wandering with balloons and midway prizes. They stared at him as they passed but nobody said anything to him or did anything. They just stared with their dead, accusing eyes.

Tate hurried through the carnival, trying to find someplace where there weren't any people but there was nowhere to go where there weren't eyes on him. He couldn't get out, he couldn't get away. He hunkered down next to a trash can and watched the blur of the carnival through a haze of near-panic.

"You're not allowed to be here," Sister Jude said behind him.

He startled and got to his feet, turning. She stood there, dressed in her nun's robes, a shiny black cane in her hand. Only she had his mother's face. She still wore the weird carnival makeup but it looked even more sinister than before. He backed away, bumping into the trash can. It fell over and spilled black and brown smelly garbage over the cracked pavement.

"Why couldn't you be a good boy?" she demanded in Sister Jude's voice. She moved closer and reached for him. He flinched but she stroked his jaw gently instead of hitting. "Such a pretty face. You could have been perfect. Why couldn't you have been perfect?"

"My head hurts," he said. His eyes burned, watering involuntarily. "I want to go home."

"You are home."

She put her hand behind his head and kissed him then, sudden and fierce.

He woke from the nightmare with a strangled yell. Momentarily overwhelmed, he mashed the heels of his hands into his eyes for a long time. A sharp sniffle after that, he could tell himself he was all right.

...

* * *

><p>Author's Note:<p>

_Freakshow_ nod there for you. It was written before the premier of the show. Interestingly, a friend of mine who turned me onto Melanie Martinez also later sent me a promo they'd found featuring her song 'Carousel'. I was tickled when I saw it. I always love it when I catch myself and the show's creative team thinking the same sort of thing.

The barker in Tate's dream is Harry Earles. He's a famous freak from the 30's. He and his wife Daisy both starred in Freaks, a 1932 horror film that featured a cool story and all kinds of freaks from the time. It's black and white and old but it's definitely worth watching. As for the Sister Jude / Constance amalgam... I couldn't resist. Although I may have to do another dream where she's also the ringmaster now that I've seen Freakshow.

Anybody watch _The Walking Dead_? I heard a rumor that Alexdra Breckenridge, young Moira from Season 1, is going to be on TWD. I like this idea.


	7. Chapter 7 - Why?

...

**Friday**

It was another routine morning. Breakfast was bland, greasy and uninspiring. In the pill line Tate was given a new cup of medication. He eyed it suspiciously. He didn't recognize anything in it.

"Are you sure these are mine?" he wanted to know. He could guess what the nurse's answer would be but he still felt the need to draw her attention to the fact that he wasn't getting what he normally did.

"I'm sure," the woman responded flatly. She was the same lady who'd given him his meds on previous days and had seen his paranoia over the pills before. It didn't impress her then or now. "Take it up with your doctor if you have a problem with it."

He grumbled under his breath and carried his the cup away. Later in the recreation room he tried to hunker down over the pills to get a better look at them but Shelley came over. He let the pills drop from his lap to the seat between his legs to hide them, though he suspected he could probably trust her with his medication secret.

"I heard you went to see Doctor Heath," she said as she sat down next to him on the couch.

Tate didn't really want her sitting so close to him at the moment but he put up with it. "Yeah."

"What for?"

"He wanted to examine my head," he said. A perverse little smile tickled the corners of his mouth. "I guess they think there's something wrong upstairs."

"Like what?"

Tate shrugged and wished she would go away so he could look at his medication. "He said he wouldn't know till the scans came back."

"Wow. Sounds serious."

The teen shrugged again. Then he lost patience with the situation. "Hey, Shelley, do you know much about the pills they give people here?"

It was her turn to shrug. "Some of them. Why?"

He glanced about. No orderlies or guards were anywhere nearby. Just the regular host of crazies and the few questionably sane people who weren't paying them any attention. So he spread his knees and offered her a peek at the small pile of multicolored pills.

Her eyes widened in surprise then she smiled at him like he'd done something clever. "You haven't been taking them?"

Tate hid them again. "I was taking some. But they changed them. Now I don't know what they are."

"What were you taking before?"

"Just the pain pill," he said. "For the headaches. They're stupidly bad."

"Let me see again," said Shelley.

He spread his legs and she leaned closer for a better look. She poked the nearest, an oblong gray one.

"I don't know what any of this shit is," she admitted.

"Knock it off!" Patrick barked at them, catching them both off guard.

Tate snapped his knees shut and Shelley fell back onto the couch, away from him. They both looked up, wide-eyed. The orderly was heading their way.

"You know that kind of behavior's not allowed," he said. "Especially in the common room. Have a little decency."

He glowered at them both for a moment then moved on. Once he was gone they looked at each other.

"He thinks we were..." said Shelley. She didn't finish but started laughing.

Tate smiled but his heart was still racing too fast for him to be genuinely amused. He'd come very close to getting caught sitting on a pile of pills. He scooped them up and sighed. He would have to wait till he was in his room to get a real good look at them but he already knew looking wouldn't do him any good. He had a hunch one of the pills would help his pains but he didn't want to have to take them all to find it.

..

In the end, Tate just stuffed all of the pills into his mattress. He wasn't in the mood to risk being a vegetable all day. So he checked out the assignment board. His name wasn't on any of the work details or class rosters. Despite what he'd said when he first arrived, he found the slight annoying. It was like they were telling him he couldn't be trusted with something as simple as clay.

"Hi, Tate."

The teen turned and saw Dr. Harmon standing there, smiling at him. Tate tried to return the expression but his lips just twisted in a wry way. It was the best he could muster.

"Hey, doc."

The man moved closer to the board, shoving his hands in the pockets of his slacks as he checked out the names posted there. After a moment he clucked his tongue. "Not on the schedule, huh?"

Tate's mouth twisted again, this time in a sour purse. "No. Even though I've pretty much been a model patient."

"That's a shame," said Ben. "On the bright side, you won't have to fold some other guy's underwear."

"I guess so."

"Have you thought about taking me up on my offer?"

Tate tipped his head. "Will talking to you get me out of here quicker?"

Now Ben knew that Tate was not a case that was going to be treat-and-release. Anyone who knew anything about the clock tower shootings knew that would never happen. But pointing that out at the moment didn't seem prudent.

"Who knows?" the doctor said noncommittally. "It's possible. But mainly what I hope it will do is help you."

Tate thought about it for a moment. "Could we do it now?"

He wasn't actually feeling like talking. His head was pounding and his body ached, which made him grouchy. But he wanted a diversion from his boredom and maybe a chance at scoring something that would ease the constant throb in his skull.

"I don't see why not," said Ben. " But we'll need to stop by the nurse's station first to check you through to the other wing."

.

Dr. Harmon's office was a bit larger than Dr. Thredson's but didn't feature much more by way of furnishings or decorations and the lighting wasn't any better. Tate sat in a chair similar to the ones that were in front of Dr. Thredson's desk.

"I hurt," he said.

"Oh?" said Ben, looking up from the pad of paper he was flipping through to find an empty page. Like Dr. Thredson he recorded all of his sessions but he also liked to take thorough hand-written notes. "What's bothering you?"

"Everything," grumped the blond boy. He picked at a loose thread on a button on his shirt. "My head mostly. But my body aches too. I think it's from the bullets."

The doctor looked at him with mild concern. "Have you told Doctor Thredson about this?"

"He knows. He was having them give me a pain pill with my daily meds but he took me off everything when I went to see Doctor Heath for my head scan. Now I've got different meds and none of them's for the pain."

"I'll look into it," said Ben, making a note.

"Can you give me something now?"

"I'm afraid not," said the doctor after a pause. "I can see about getting you something after I discuss it with Thredson but I can't go prescribing you things without his consent."

That was not what Tate wanted to hear. He glowered and folded his arms over his middle. "But I hurt now."

"Do you want to talk about your pain?" asked Doctor Harmon. "Or what we came here to discuss?"

"That IS what we came here to discuss!" Tate exploded, tears springing to his eyes. They didn't fall. "Don't you fucking get it? _This_ is why!" He smacked his head with his open palm, messing his hair up more than it usually was. "My fucking head HURTS! All the time! I can't think. I can't sleep. All I can do is hurt! Everybody keeps asking me 'Why?', 'Why?', 'Why?' and I can't tell them because to tell you the God's honest truth I don't remember what the hell I was thinking while I was up there!"

Tate flopped back in his chair and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. His head was pounding fiercely. The pain was almost like a living presence, sitting on his head like a demon, poking his brain with a pitchfork.

"Look," he said after a moment, fixing the therapist with a steady gaze. "My head hurts. A lot. It started out just off and on and mostly manageable. But the longer it goes, the more strange shit I think. Did you see the note I wrote? The one from before, that Doctor Thredson has?"

Dr. Harmon gave a little nod; he had seen the note when he'd gone through his colleague's files without permission.

"Well, there you go," said the teen, waving his hands in an all-inclusive gesture.

"You said you wanted them to examine your brain during autopsy," the doctor prompted.

Tate gave a little nod. "Yeah. I think something's not right up here." He tapped his temple. "Maybe I am just crazy. Maybe it's just the fucking headaches. I really don't give a shit anymore. All I really care about is the fact that my head really hurts and if it doesn't stop soon I might do something nobody likes."

Ben eyed the young man. While the words were threatening, he didn't get the feeling Tate was saying it to posture. "When you're on pain medication, you feel more stable?"

Tate glanced up at the ceiling briefly, a flippant gesture that turned into true consideration. "I guess so. It's like... I'm not thinking about it all the time. You know? So I can split my weird thoughts away from the not-weird thoughts easier."

"Weird thoughts?"

"You know," the teen shrugged. He picked at the loose button thread some more. "Everybody has weird thoughts. Like how you'd like to punch that guy that cut you off in line at the cafeteria or how you'd like to do your best friend's chick. Or maybe how you'd like to run your boss over because he fucked you over on a pay raise again. Whatever. Only you don't do it because you can tell yourself: 'That's just a thought. Now get back to work.'."

"So you're saying it's difficult for you to distinguish the difference between right and wrong - real and fantasy - when these headaches are bothering you?" Ben jotted down some notes quickly.

Tate chewed his lower lip then squinted his left eye a little as he thought. "More like it's difficult for me to give a shit. The world's such a screwed up place, you know? People doing fucked up shit for fucked up reasons. None of us really knows what's really going on. We're all just scrambling around trying to figure out how to make ourselves happy before we die. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, people are doing the most depraved, fucked up shit imaginable. And why?" He paused but it wasn't a question meant to be answered. "No reason. Just because we're here."

"If you really didn't care, why take the trouble to go out and kill a bunch of people?" asked the doctor, knowing he was testing the boundaries now. "Seems like an awful lot of work for something you don't care about."

But Tate just shrugged again. "Beats blowing your brains out anonymously in some dusty basement. At least this way I made the news."

Ben sensed that was a bullshit answer but he let it slide.

"Well," he said, offering Tate a small smile. "I'd like to talk to Doctor Thredson before we go on, if you don't mind. I want to find out what the situation is with your medication and whether we can get you something for your pain. Did Doctor Heath tell you when your results might be ready?"

Tate shook his head.

"All right," said Dr. Harmon. "I'll get together with him as well. We'll figure out a treatment plan, Tate, that will help you."

Tate sensed that was bullshit but he, too, let it slide. He put on a false smile. "Thanks, doc."

..

Violet had seen her father go into his office with Tate. She'd been putting some files into the huge oak filing cabinet at the end of the hall when they had gone in. She could have gotten her work done quickly but she took her time, dragging it out so she could talk to her dad afterward.

Eventually they came back out. Violet had planned to go into her dad's office and wait for him to return but she decided at the last moment to follow the pair. She did so at a distance so her father wouldn't notice her. Fortunately he seemed to be caught up chatting with his patient; she may as well have been invisible.

She followed them through to the central atrium where she hid herself behind the spiral stairs while her dad wrapped up the conversation. Tate went into the hall leading to the commons then and Ben headed back in the direction of his office.

Violet hesitated then headed toward the patients' hall. There was a guard stationed there and she decided if he gave her any guff about going in, she would simply tell him that she had a message for one of the other staff. He didn't stop her though. He barely glanced up from his copy of Reader's Digest long enough to notice she was there.

The girl felt a thrill of excitement as she moved down the dark hall. There was a sense of danger in coming to the ward alone. She was ordinarily fairly unflappable; it took a lot to rattle her. Her father called her fearless but a lot of the time she just felt bored. Horror movies didn't scare her; she knew they weren't real. She knew there was a possibility of real risk in amongst the insane. She wasn't suicidal. It was just fun to feel on edge for once.

She reached the common room and peeked in through the left open door, one hand on the door frame. The wide room was hazy with cigarette smoke and the people in it shuffled around like the damned in hell. A few conversed or tried to play games but the majority just seemed to be acting weird.

It took her a few moments to spot Tate. He was sitting on one of the low, ugly couches that dotted the commons. There were a couple of other guys with him and they were talking. She wasn't quite bold enough to cross the room to where he was so she stood there watching him.

She tried to envision him up there, on the deck of the clock tower, picking off people one by one. He smiled while she watched, dimples appearing in his cheeks. She couldn't match that cherubic face to what she knew of the tragedy. Since she'd first heard of the clock tower shootings Violet had followed the crime avidly. She'd put together a scrapbook containing news articles she'd clipped from various papers and magazines. She'd even found some old yearbook photos of Tate Langdon and put them in there as well.

She knew the obsession was weird which was why she kept the scrapbook hidden under her bed. She didn't approve of the murders by any means and she didn't think it was right. But she thought she understood Tate, based on what she'd read of him and his past. She felt a sense of kinship she couldn't explain or even understand herself. The articles she had read had never implied a motive but based on what she read - his history, the suicide note - and her own feelings about life and people, she could see how someone could arrive at the point he did.

She only wished that they had met sooner. Before he did what he did. Perhaps she could have helped steer that energy someplace less negative and horrible. After a few more seconds the girl finally left the doorway. The nuns would surely miss her if she didn't turn up soon. So she headed back down the hall, considering what life might have been like if she had somehow met the clock tower shooter before he lost his way.

"Violet."

At the sound of his voice she stopped and turned. He had followed her and was standing just a few feet away. A little smile touched the corners of her lips.

"Hi."

He smiled and those dimples surfaced again. "Hi. Come here often?" His smile split into a grin.

"Every chance I get," she responded sarcastically. Then she said more seriously: "Hey. Um. You... want to go someplace and talk?"

He gave her a funny look. "I can't exactly go anywhere."

"Your room's not locked right now. Is it?"

Tate blinked and shrugged. "No. Not till later."

"Let's go there," she smiled.

..

Tate led the way to the men's ward. Since there wasn't a guard stationed there, no one questioned them. The wasted patients in the halls certainly didn't care. Once in his room, the teen headed for his bed and flopped on it, making it creak.

"Oh, my God," Violet murmured in awe, looking around as she moved further into the tiny cell. "This place is..."

"Prison?" Tate supplied for her. He folded his hands over his middle and looked at her expectantly.

The corner of her mouth twitched in a faint, wry smile. "Yeah." She got wide-eyed again as she realized how little furniture was in the room. She sat down in the chair beside the bed. "How can you stand it?"

"The drugs help," he admitted. "But it's not like I've got much of a choice. You know?"

She nodded, conceding that.

"You got a cigarette?"

"No," she said. "Not on me. They won't let me have them in here."

"Why are you here?" he asked then, surprising her.

"What?"

"Why are you here," he repeated. "With me. In here. Your old man would kill both of us if he knew you were in here."

She fidgeted a little then shrugged. "I guess I just wanted to know... Why."

He couldn't help rolling his eyes. Then he dimpled another grin. "That's the million dollar question, isn't it?"

"Well?" she pressed. Now that the subject was out in the open, she wanted an answer. She might not get another chance to learn what could make a seemingly normal young man go berserk at school.

He looked at her for a long moment, trying to decide what to tell her. The problem was, he'd told Dr. Harmon the truth: Even he wasn't entirely sure of why he'd gone through with the shooting. He'd done a good job of hiding that fact from the doctors who'd been trying to shrink him but it was true. The event itself had taken on the shape of a hazy nightmare for him. It was a tangle of impressions and images without feelings attached.

He thought back to the time before, when he was stockpiling his weapons. So many nights spent sitting up in his room, learning how to take them apart and put them together, how to clean and load them. It was hours and hours of busy work that had taken his mind off the persistent pain in his head. Back then it had been a fantasy, a way to blow off steam after dealing with a world full of mindless zombie-people. People who bit at you simply because you were near.

"When I was a kid," he said, picking at some dead skin next to his thumbnail. "I used to have this nightmare a lot... Sometimes twice a week. I'd dream I was at a swimming party and there were all these other kids running around the pool, swimming and jumping off the diving board and going down the water slide. And for some weird reason I start sinking down to the bottom. I can't swim back up no matter how hard I try. I'm drowning and I look up and above me, all around, are these people and they're so busy being dipshits splashing each other and having fun that they don't notice me thrashing. Not even the grownups who're supposed to be watching. I can't scream. Nobody can hear me. Nobody cares."

He paused then and looked at her. She was listening with rapt attention. He gave her a wry little smile.

"I always heard that if you die in your dreams, you die in real life," he said. He ripped off a tiny chunk of skin, making his cuticle sting. "It's not true. I died every time in that dream."

Violet shifted in the chair and propped her elbows on her thighs. She'd thought if she met and talked to the clock tower shooter perhaps she'd finally be able to understand enough to satisfy the need for closure she felt. Then she would be able to let the matter go and move on. But she was more enthralled than before. Tate was no Ed Gein. If anything, meeting him had only deepened the mystery as to why he did what he did.

"What do you think it means?" she asked.

"That I shouldn't go swimming," he grinned.

"Not much risk of that happening here."

"Funny enough," he said, chin lifting. "I haven't had been swimming once since I've been here."

"Really?" she smiled.

"Scout's honor," said Tate, holding up the Boy Scout salute.

"You're a Boy Scout?"

He gave a soft snort. "Was. Haven't been for a long time."

There was a pause, then she said: "Did you know any of the people you killed?"

Tate hesitated then shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe." He thought about it more. Flashes of forms rushed through his mind, none familiar. "Probably not."

She shook her head, amazed. "I don't get it, Tate. You seem like a nice guy. How... how could you just _do_ something like that?"

"I was mad."

Violet stared at him, perplexed. "At who?"

She had no idea how frustrated her father and Dr. Thredson would be. In just a few minutes she'd managed to get to a place with Tate that they'd been trying over a week to get to.

"Everybody," he said. "For letting me drown."

"But. That was just a dream."

"I don't mean literally," he said. He sat up then, suddenly intense. "There was all kinds of fucked up shit happening, Violet. Stuff you wouldn't believe unless you saw it yourself. And not just growing up at my house. The school? Oh, my God, the school." Tate pressed his wrists to his temples for a moment, overwhelmed by the memories. "People disappearing. You know they've got tunnels that connect to the ones here? Harvey told me."

He was starting to sound paranoid to Violet but she still didn't find him scary or dangerous. Just confused and maybe even a little scared.

"Who's Harvey?"

"Another patient," Tate said.

"You're not supposed to be in here," Max the orderly barked from the doorway.

Violet hopped up and scampered out, ducking past the big man with one last apologetic glance at Tate. Once she was gone Max came all the way into the room, cracking his knuckles.

"You just like gettin' in trouble with the ladies, don't you?"

Finding the man's demeanor entirely too threatening, Tate tensed up and eyed him warily.

When he didn't get an answer, Max smirked. "Yeah, well. This time it's gonna cost ya." He pushed the cell door shut and moved toward the bed, one hand drifting to his crotch. "Come on over here and suck on this."

Tate stared at him, surprised at first then disgusted when he realized the orderly was serious. "Fuck you."

Max clucked his tongue. "You got two choices, sunshine. Get over here and polish the ol' knob or I tell Sister Jude how you can't keep your hands off the ladies. She'll castrate you and then she'll can your little candy striper girlfriend. You'll never see her again."

A slow, sickening chill spread through Tate and he wished that he would wake up. But it wasn't a dream. This was another miniature horrid reality that wasn't going to go away just because he didn't want to participate any longer. Hot tears stung his eyes but he blinked them back, making his sinuses burn.

"Well?" said Max. He pulled his dick out. "Come on. We don't got all day."

Hating the moment, the orderly, and even himself, Tate sat up. He didn't look at the fat dick the dark-haired man was waving in his face. He took a breath, opened his mouth and shut his eyes. Immediately Max shoved his cock in. Springy pubic hair tickled the teen's nose and he felt the guy's hand on his head, forcing him all the way down.

"You even think about biting," the orderly growled. "And I'll put you in a wheelchair."

Tate thought about it anyway as the man started to thrust. But it was a hollow thought he didn't act on. The short-term victory would be sweet but the long term would be even worse for him - and for Violet too. Revenge would have to wait. For now.

It was an awful eight minutes for Tate, gagging and choking on Max's cock as the man roughly face-fucked him. When the orderly finally came, he pulled out and shot his load all over the teen's face, laughing while he did. Then he gave the boy's blond head a pat and left him there like that.

Tate hastily wiped his face as best he could with his hands then hurried to the bathroom where he spent several minutes washing and washing his face and mouth.

It didn't make him feel clean.

He sank to the mildewed tile floor and hugged himself miserably.

**xxx**

* * *

><p>Author's Note:<p>

Camera pans back away from Tate, back and back out through the halls and out to a long-shot of Briarcliff asylum. Roll credits. Etc.

Sorry this is a day late. Things have been crazy-busy around here with Halloween month on. Lots of fun stuff! Haunted houses and movies and carnivals and costuming. It's my favorite holiday - and that of most of my friends.

Speaking of which, I am planning on having a Halloween episode in this S2AU. It probably won't get here till around November 2014 real time though so we'll just have to celebrate twice.

The end of this episode actually made me feel slightly ill to my stomach. Not often I manage to write something that bothers even me.

Check back next week for Episode 3.


End file.
